


The Treasure of Palenque

by ImprobableDreams900



Series: The Adventures of Arkansas Jones Crowley [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1950s, Action/Adventure, Archaeology, Historical Accuracy, Human AU, Indiana Jones AU, Linguistics, M/M, Mesoamerica, Nazis, Palenque, Romance, maya - Freeform, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 37,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28640538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImprobableDreams900/pseuds/ImprobableDreams900
Summary: Having just crossed the Atlantic, the anthropologist Aziraphale finds himself in need of a local guide to take him through the Mexican jungle to the ancient Maya city of Palenque. Luckily, the services of one A. J. Crowley are available.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: The Adventures of Arkansas Jones Crowley [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2115201
Comments: 146
Kudos: 117
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [2020 Good Omens Holiday Exchange](https://go-exchange.dreamwidth.org/262146.html). My recipient asked for an Indiana Jones-style adventure with Aziraphale and Crowley. Their dynamic ended up being more akin to the main romance in The Mummy, and the setting definitely owes something to The Road to El Dorado, but, hey, it’s all the same genre, right?

**Villahermosa, Yucatán peninsula, Mexico, 1952**

Aziraphale considered himself quite a sharp tack, as far as tacks went. He possessed not one, not two, but _three_ advanced degrees, a distinguished military history, a promising scholarly career, and an antiquarian bookshop of generous size.

He had devoted much of the last four years to researching the ancient people of the Yucatán and, to a lesser extent, their modern descendants, meticulously combing through piles of books, treatises, monographs, and lithographs until he felt as well-informed as the leading scholars of the age. So well-informed, in fact, that he’d decided to mount this little expedition to visit one of the ancient sites in person.

And yet, despite the years of diligent and committed study, one tiny, seemingly insignificant detail had somehow managed to evade Aziraphale: just how damned _hot_ it was.

Aziraphale desperately fanned his Panama hat in front of his face, but the faint stirrings of air it produced didn’t provide much relief. Admittedly, it probably didn’t help much that he was wearing a three-piece suit, but it was what had seemed appropriate when he’d packed back in London.

He looked longingly down at the battered, modestly-sized cabin trunk he’d briefly set down next to himself on the cracked pavement, wondering bleakly if he should have allotted less room to books and more room to climate-appropriate clothing.

After a moment’s thought, Aziraphale decided that, no, he really did need all those books if he was to get his work done here, and what was a little heat, really? Or, perhaps more accurately, a lot of humidity?

Aziraphale drew a steadying breath and continued to fan himself ineffectually with his hat as he looked up at the bar on the other side of the street, eyeing the faded lettering above the door dubiously.

It was midmorning, so there was plenty of traffic—cars rumbling past and pedestrians strolling by in the shade of the buildings opposite—but he had a clear enough view, and this was definitely the bar he was looking for. Not that it looked any different from any of the other drinking establishments he’d passed on his way here: all of them low buildings with red tile roofs, grilled windows, and colorful plaster walls that had already begun to crack and peel, giving their structures a distinctly unsafe appearance. In addition, this particular establishment had a good deal of cigar smoke coiling out of one window, despite the fact that it was still at least two hours to lunchtime.

It wasn’t the sort of establishment that a person of Aziraphale’s repute would happily find themself considering entering, and yet here he was.

Aziraphale sighed, glanced around the crowded street as though to make sure that no socialites had suddenly appeared to witness his actions, picked up his trunk by its worn leather handle, and crossed to the bar.

The smell of cheap cigar smoke was stronger here, and when Aziraphale cautiously pushed the door open he caught the sharp smell of distilled alcohol. He wrinkled his nose in distaste but stepped inside nonetheless, nervously adjusting his grip on his Panama hat.

Despite its exterior appearance, the bar was actually only about a third full, with most of the cigar smoke and raucous laughter coming from a group of young men seated near the window. The chatter in the air was primarily in Spanish, which Aziraphale had a good working knowledge of, but he picked up a few words in German from a pair of stony-faced men sitting to one side of the doorway. One of them broke off mid-sentence to eye Aziraphale suspiciously as he paused beside their table, and Aziraphale quickly moved away, towards the bar and the friendly-looking man rubbing down glasses behind it.

“Hola,” Aziraphale greeted nervously, setting his trunk down on one of the barstools. As soon as he did so, he felt it stick slightly on the lacquered surface, and he wished suddenly that he’d set it on the floor instead. Then he decided that that was probably worse.

The barman looked him up and down, and Aziraphale was again reminded of how overdressed he was. “English?” he asked in a strong accent, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Yes,” Aziraphale admitted, rolling up his Panama hat and nervously stuffing it in his jacket pocket. “I’m looking for a—” The group of young men by the window broke out into a loud round of laughter, and Aziraphale leaned closer and raised his voice. “—looking for a guide. To take me into the jungle. I heard there were guides here.” Then, in case the man didn’t actually speak English, he repeated himself in Spanish, stumbling several times as he did so. Most of his experience with Spanish, Aziraphale had to admit, was with reading it. Pronunciation and sentence composition were another thing entirely.

Luckily, the barman seemed to understand what he meant, because he smiled and pointed to a table not far away, where a group of six or so elderly men were sitting. “That one is guide. Very good.”

Aziraphale leaned back and lifted his trunk from the barstool, trying not to visibly grimace at the ominous unsticking noise it made as it came free. “Thank you. Ah, gracias, señor.”

Aziraphale turned his attention to the table the barman had indicated, weaving around several unoccupied tables until he’d drawn close enough to hear what was being said. At the same time, he realized that the group wasn’t entirely old men: five of them were, and they sat smoking and drinking as they listened with rapt attention to their youngest member.

He was clearly in the middle of a tale, his fingers weaving a story as he looked around at his audience with bright, unusual golden eyes. He looked about Aziraphale’s age, and, despite the fluent Spanish that left his lips and a healthy tan, he was white. Perhaps an estranged European like himself?

Aziraphale’s shaky grasp of spoken Spanish wasn’t sufficient to reveal the details of the man’s story, but he caught something about a boulder, lots of running, and an object made of gold.

Aziraphale blinked in surprise. If this fellow was retelling one of his previous mishaps in the jungle, he was certainly qualified as a guide.

The old men surrounding him seemed to agree, nodding along and gasping a little as the man’s tale continued. He had noticed Aziraphale watching from just outside of their circle, though, and after a few more lines he finished and sat back with a wide grin, the old men groaning in disappointment. One of them tossed a cigarette butt at him.

Aziraphale saw his opening and moved a bit closer, keeping his trunk in front of him and away from any potentially hazardous furniture. “Guía?” he asked hopefully. “I’m looking for a guide?”

“That’s me,” the golden-eyed man said, and as he switched to English Aziraphale was surprised to detect a British accent. Not as upper-class as Aziraphale’s own, of course, but still very welcome in this strange land. The man glanced back at his grumbling audience as he stood, preparing to depart the table. “Adiós, señores.”

Several of the old men bid him farewell, and then the golden-eyed man wound his way around the table and extended his hand. “A. J. Crowley, at your service.”

“Aziraphale Godson,” Aziraphale supplied, taking in the other man’s lithe frame and calloused but firm grip. “It’s a terrible name, I know, but it’s what I have.”

Crowley actually snorted a bit at that. “Barely worse than mine.”

“Oh? What’s yours?”

Crowley sniffed a little, the movement crinkling his nose. He really was terribly uncouth, this chap. “Not important. You can call me Crowley. Everyone does.”

“Ah. Of course,” Aziraphale said, reflecting that at least his potential guide didn’t smell too strongly. Or perhaps the smell of cigar smoke and alcohol hanging in the air was masking it. “I’m in need of a guide for a trip out into the jungle. I was meant to be met by a colleague but I just learned he’s come down with malaria.”

Crowley grunted and started towards the bar, beckoning Aziraphale to follow him. It was a bit quieter over there, the pair of German-speaking men now playing a game of dice. Crowley rapped on the surface of the bar to get the barman’s attention.

“Xtabentún,” he said, flipping a coin onto the bar. He hopped up onto one of the barstools and turned his attention back to Aziraphale, keeping one foot casually perched on the bottom rung of the stool. “So whereabouts in the jungle are you headed?”

“Palenque,” Aziraphale supplied, eyeing the nearest barstool warily and deciding not to risk it.

“That little town?” Crowley asked, looking surprised.

“Not the town, the ruins,” Aziraphale explained, shifting his heavy trunk to his other hand. “The ancient city.”

“Oh, yeah. I know the place. About three days out.”

Aziraphale nodded.

“So what’s there for you, if I can ask? You want me to bring you back, too?”

“Ah,” Aziraphale said, brightening at this opportunity to speak about his work, “well, it’s an ancient Maya city, and I’m a—well, I suppose you could say I’m an anthropologist. I’ve been doing some research, and I found something really quite interesting that I think may have been overlooked by other scholars and I need to…well, I need to check it out in person. I have a theory, you see, and if I’m right it’ll be really quite…” —Aziraphale fished around for the right word— “… _rewarding_.”

“Hm,” Crowley said, but instead of wearing the expression of bored politeness that usually accompanied Aziraphale’s explanations, he looked very interested. “The Maya, they made a lot of things out of gold, didn’t they? And jade, like that double-headed snake they’ve got at the British Museum, yeah?”

Aziraphale blinked, more than a little surprised that someone who voluntarily frequented an establishment such as this was familiar with such an artifact. “That’s Aztec, but yes, it’s similar. And it’s made of turquoise, if I’m not mistaken. The Maya preferred working in jade.”

“Hmm,” Crowley said again, and there was an excited gleam in his golden eyes.

“This one—he is snake speaker,” the barman volunteered as he pushed Crowley’s drink over to him, and Aziraphale realized that he must have been listening in on their conversation, and likely understood more English than Aziraphale had suspected.

“Snake _whisperer_ , it’s _whisperer_ , Fernando,” Crowley corrected in exasperation before taking a sip of his drink.

“Whisperer,” the barman corrected, and moved further away down the bar, repeating “snake _whisperer_ ” under his breath in his heavy Spanish accent.

“Anyway,” Crowley said, turning his attention back to Aziraphale and tapping a finger on the side of his glass. “One-way trip? Two-way? How long’s it going to take to find this treasure of yours?”

“Oh, it’s hard to say,” Aziraphale replied, suddenly quite taken by the idea of himself as a treasure hunter. “Not more than a couple of days. I have to be back in Veracruz in a fortnight, but I don’t think it’ll take nearly that long. And if you’re available, I’d like the trip back too. I’ll pay you extra to wait.”

“Works for me,” Crowley said, taking a long drink. “When do you want to leave?”

“Today, if possible.” Aziraphale shifted his trunk back to his other hand. “I haven’t secured any rooms here, you see.”

Crowley’s glass, halfway to his mouth again, paused, its bearer panning his gaze up and down Aziraphale. “You want to leave dressed like that?”

Though Aziraphale himself had been questioning his wardrobe choices just minutes before, he drew himself up to his full height, insulted by the tone of voice in which this advice had been delivered. “And what’s wrong with how I’m dressed?”

Crowley looked like he was suppressing a smile as he took another quick swig of his drink. “Oh, nothing.”

“Hmph,” Aziraphale said shortly, and in a rather superior tone.

“We can leave in an hour,” Crowley said after taking another long drink, nearly emptying the glass. “I’ll need to get my things. You all right meeting back here?”

Aziraphale nodded. “I’ll just wait here. Haven’t anywhere else to go.”

Crowley grunted understanding and took another moment to eye Aziraphale’s elegant but already very sweaty waistcoat. Then he hopped down from the barstool, drained his glass, and waved to the barman. “All right, then. Adiós.” He headed for the door, the pair of Germans looking up from their game of dice as he passed them.

Once Crowley had gone, Aziraphale turned his gaze back to the barstools, his arms already sore from carrying his heavy trunk. After a moment’s deliberation, he decided he really didn’t want to stand there for a full hour, so he set his trunk on the floor and gingerly seated himself on the nearest barstool. As he’d suspected, he felt himself stick a little.

“Crowley is good guide,” the barman Fernando said conversationally, moving over and collecting Crowley’s empty glass. “He is snake _whisperer_ , protect you from jungle snake.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale said, uneasily recognizing this as another area his scholarly texts hadn’t prepared him for. He knew many of the Maya legends about serpents, of course, but somehow he hadn’t considered the fact that those native snakes might still be living in the Yucatán. He recalled a book he had back at his bookshop about snake venoms and antivenoms, and wished suddenly that he’d thought to bring it along.

“Good guide,” Fernando reiterated, patting Aziraphale’s hand with altogether too much familiarity. “Drink?”

  


* * *

  


When Crowley returned a little under an hour later, Aziraphale was all too happy to see him. Fernando had seemed personally insulted by the fact that Aziraphale hadn’t been interested in getting drunk right before heading into a snake-infested jungle, and had evidently decided to exact his revenge for this slight by attempting to help Aziraphale with his Spanish.

Needless to say, this quickly became a frustrating activity, and Aziraphale was in the middle of trying to correctly pronounce _ahorrar_ when Crowley arrived, his guide smirking at Aziraphale’s botched pronunciation.

“Fresh off the boat, I see.”

Aziraphale scowled at him. “I have read a great deal of Spanish books, I will have you know,” he snapped. “The accent here is not what I expected.”

“Sure, sure,” Crowley said easily, adjusting the strap of a rucksack slung across his back. “You ready to go? We can cover a lot of ground today if we get moving.”

Aziraphale nodded stiffly, turned back to Fernando and forced himself to thank the barman in as kind of a voice as he could muster, and followed Crowley outside.

If anything, the streets of Villahermosa had grown even hotter, and Aziraphale resisted the urge to start fanning himself with his hat again.

“How do you stand the heat?” Aziraphale asked his guide, honestly hoping for a few tips. “And the _humidity?_ ”

“Oh, you get used to it,” Crowley replied easily, glancing back to make sure Aziraphale was following before leading the way down the pavement. While he’d been gone, he’d changed into an open-collared white shirt and long, loose-fitting khaki trousers, and he looked so comfortable in them that Aziraphale felt a pang of irrational jealousy. “It was even hotter last week. You’ve come during a nice cool spell.”

Aziraphale could have spluttered with indignation, but he forced down the impulse, telling himself that it was the heat making him irritable, and it wasn’t wise to get on the wrong side of his guide. It’d probably be all too easy for Crowley-the-snake-whisperer to lure one of his venomous pals over, make it look like an accident, rob Aziraphale blind, and leave him to die in the jungle.

With that cheery thought, Aziraphale fell into step behind Crowley as he led them through the city.


	2. Chapter 2

As they neared the edge of Villahermosa, fields and forest beginning to overtake the buildings, Aziraphale nervously cleared his throat.

“Crowley?”

“Yeah?”

“Ah, where are we going?”

Crowley paused slightly and glanced over his shoulder at Aziraphale. “Palenque,” he stated, as though it was obvious.

“Yes, but…” Aziraphale looked around them. They were walking along the edge of a cracked asphalt road, the occasional car trundling past, but the buildings were thinning at an alarming rate. “Aren’t we going to take a car or a train? At least part of the way?”

Crowley gave an amused snort and turned his attention back to where he was walking. “The roads around here are rubbish. This one stops being paved not far ahead, and, at this time of year, it’ll be almost entirely mud. We’ll follow the road as far as we can and then head off through the jungle to Palenque. Only way to get there.”

“But—but—” Aziraphale protested, his trunk already feeling very, very heavy in his hand. “You don’t mean we’re going to walk for _three days straight?_ ”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Crowley said without turning around, and sounded awfully pleased about it.

For a moment, Aziraphale thought about refusing. Returning to Villahermosa and finding another, more sensible, guide. It was tempting, but it was also true that he didn’t know anything about the area. If Crowley said the roads were bad, they probably were. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t _known_ that he’d have to go through the jungle at some point or another to reach Palenque. It was just that, when he’d planned this trip, it hadn’t seemed quite so…personally challenging.

“You coming?”

Aziraphale looked down at the trunk in his hand and closed his eyes briefly, summoning all the excitement and courage that had prompted him to embark on this journey in the first place. Palenque held wonderful secrets just waiting to be uncovered: of this he was certain. And, having gone through all the bother of crossing the Atlantic, was he going to give up now, only three days’ travel from his destination?

“I’m coming,” Aziraphale ground out, and tightened his grip on his trunk.

* * *

Crowley would have been happy to continue walking until nightfall, but a few hours beforehand it was clear that his client was not going to make it that long.

Oh, he was still walking, and whenever Crowley paused to glance over his shoulder Aziraphale insisted that he was fine, but Crowley could hear his ragged breathing well enough, and it couldn’t have been much fun clutching that trunk. It was of the type designed to be carried into the cabin of a steamer while the larger luggage was stowed below, and was therefore modestly sized, but whatever was in it must have been quite heavy, because Aziraphale frequently changed the way he was carrying it.

As amusing as it was to watch someone clearly used to a sedentary, upper-crust English lifestyle put to the test of the Mexican summer, the fact remained that Crowley was a hired guide, not a general leading a forced march, and he eventually slowed to a halt and declared that they were stopping for the night.

A wave of relief crossed Aziraphale’s face, and he immediately set the trunk down and put his hands on his knees, heaving in breaths. Crowley half-expected him to produce a monogrammed silk handkerchief.

“We should set up camp a bit further from the road,” Crowley said, eyeing the forest around them. “We can follow the road for a few more hours tomorrow morning, but it’s best not to camp right beside it.”

Aziraphale nodded, or did something like it, sounding very winded as he drew deep, ragged breaths, his hands still on his knees.

Crowley’s mouth twisted. “You shouldn’t have brought that trunk, you know,” he offered. “It’s not designed to be carried long distances.”

Aziraphale gave a hollow laugh, as though that hadn’t occurred to him a dozen miles back, and sank to the ground beside the trunk, putting a hand on one of the tarnished latches. “I’ll need it when we get to Palenque. It has all my notes and supplies.”

“Ah,” Crowley said in understanding, thinking vaguely that being an archeologist must require lots of heavy hammers and brushes and things. “We could try making a harness or something so you could carry it on your back. It’d probably hurt your arms less. I have rope.”

Aziraphale looked relieved at the suggestion. “That’d be wonderful. I’m afraid I really wasn’t much prepared for this.”

“No,” Crowley agreed.

Aziraphale looked down at the patch of muddy ground beside him, appearing very much like he was considering keeling over and falling asleep right there.

“Let’s move further from the road,” Crowley repeated. “We can have some dinner and I’ll set up the hammocks.”

At the word ‘dinner,’ Aziraphale perked up, looking at Crowley hopefully.

“Yes, I brought some for you, too,” Crowley said, taking a few steps away from the crumbling excuse for a road and waiting for Aziraphale to get up and follow him. “Extra water, as well. Doubted you’d remember to bring anything.”

“In my defense, I _was_ expecting to be met by my colleague from the National Institute,” Aziraphale said, a tad huffily, but he climbed wearily to his feet and picked up his trunk nonetheless. “He was going to attend to all the details.”

“I see.”

Aziraphale grumbled something under his breath but fell into step behind Crowley as he led them into the forest.

Crowley walked until he’d found a good spot—a high canopy of leaves, enough space between tree trunks to hang the hammocks and afford a good view of anyone or anything approaching, and a small clearing that wasn’t quite as muddy as it could have been—and declared that they’d camp here.

Aziraphale immediately sat down again, looking very out of place in his cream three-piece suit that, even with the significant lag in transatlantic fashions, Crowley knew was at least two decades out of date.

“Stay here,” Crowley directed, scanning the forest.

He set off into the trees and began to scout around their campsite, searching for edible plants that could supplement their dinner, poisonous plants he ought to warn his client about, and less pleasant things like jaguar pawprints. Where the latter was concerned, he didn’t really expect to find any—they were still quite close to the road, and easily forty miles from the heart of the jungle—but one could never be too careful.

When he had satisfied himself that the area was secure and free from potential hazards, Crowley made one final circuit and then headed back to the little clearing.

As he stepped back into view, moving soundlessly with the ease of long practice, Aziraphale’s head snapped around and he jumped a little, as much as he could while sitting on the forest floor.

Seeing his client’s reaction, Crowley gave him a slightly predatory grin. “Nothing about,” he reported and pulled his rucksack from his back.

He selected one of the less muddy patches of ground to set it down on and retrieved a wrapped package of jerky and hardtack from one of the pockets. He pulled a few pieces of each free and handed them to Aziraphale, who was still sitting beside his trunk in the center of the clearing.

“You seem quite…at home here,” Aziraphale ventured as Crowley tucked the extra food away and set about unclasping the coiled hammock that was strapped to the bottom of his rucksack.

“Been here a long time,” Crowley said vaguely, straightening up and gauging the distances between the nearby trees.

“How’d that happen? Most people who are looking to get away stop at Brighton or Morecambe.”

Crowley made a faint sound of amusement and moved to his chosen tree, which had a Y-shaped fork at about shoulder height. He tested the strength of the offshoot branch.

“You _are_ from Britain, right? I can hear it in your accent.”

“Yeah,” Crowley admitted, unrolling the hammock and looping the rope lead around the trunk of the tree, right above the fork. “Near Manchester.”

“Lovely area,” Aziraphale said, though it sounded a bit forced. “Do you still have family there?”

“No.”

“Ah.”

Crowley finished securing the rope, gave it an experimental tug, and slightly adjusted the slip knot. Then he crossed to the second tree he’d selected and repeated the process, tying the rope lead around the trunk with an overhand knot and then using a secondary slip knot to fine-tune the tension, until the hammock was stretched comfortably between the two trees.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said unexpectedly. “I didn’t mean to pry. I just thought—well, we’re going to be on this trip for a while. Might as well get to know each other a bit.”

Crowley didn’t know what to say to that, so he managed a vague “Ah,” and busied himself with retrieving the second hammock from his bag.

“Oh, I don’t need a hammock,” Aziraphale offered when he saw what Crowley was doing. “I don’t think it’d agree with me. I can sleep on the ground.”

“It’s too damp,” Crowley said, selecting a tree on the opposite side of the clearing and beginning to lash the rope lead to its trunk with the ease of long practice. “You won’t like it. And you’ll be harder to reach in a hammock.”

There was a pause. “Harder to reach…?”

“For the snakes,” Crowley clarified, tying the overhand knot and giving it an experimental tug. He looked back at Aziraphale, who appeared suitably stricken by this statement. “And the spiders.”

“I—I suppose I can give it a try,” Aziraphale said weakly.

Crowley looked away to hide an amused smile. Despite the many headaches that undoubtedly lay ahead, this was at least shaping up to be an interesting trip.

He finished setting up Aziraphale’s hammock and then gave the surrounding forest one more quick scout in case he’d missed anything the first time around. He caught a glimpse of movement in the direction of the road, probably a passing car, but nothing more. When he was confident no danger was present, he returned to the clearing.

Aziraphale was still sitting on the damp ground, and as Crowley approached he saw with surprise that the jerky and hardtack he’d given Aziraphale were lying untouched on the top of his trunk.

“Don’t like it?” Crowley asked, motioning towards the trunk as he rummaged around in one of his rucksack pockets for his own dinner. “It’s not exactly the Ritz, I know, but it keeps well and doesn’t attract wildlife.”

“Hm?” Aziraphale asked, and then seemed to realize what Crowley meant. “Oh, no, no, I’m sure it’s fine,” he said, hastily picking up his jerky. “I was just waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Crowley asked, preoccupied with double-checking the clasps on his rucksack.

“For you. It’d be rude to make you eat alone.”

Crowley stopped and looked over at Aziraphale, incredulous. A good part of him wanted to laugh at the absurdity of following such an antiquated, privileged custom out here in the jungle, but the rest of him was oddly moved.

“Ah, that’s—you didn’t have to,” Crowley stammered, feeling wrongfooted in a way he hadn’t felt in quite a while.

“Well, I have,” Aziraphale asserted. “So do stop prowling about and come sit down and eat.”

“I—I don’t prowl—” Crowley protested, but he was still on the wrong foot and couldn’t seem to conjure anything witty. In the end, he gave up and just sat down across from Aziraphale, trying to avoid the worst of the mud. Usually he would have eaten in his hammock, nice and dry, but retreating there now would have seemed like a refusal of Aziraphale’s gesture.

“There,” Aziraphale said in satisfaction as Crowley seated himself gingerly on the ground, and then lifted his strip of jerky as if in a toast.

Inexplicably, Crowley felt himself color a bit, and he hastily busied himself with his dinner. It really wasn’t anything to recommend, designed for long-term storage and high caloric output, but for some reason he found himself enjoying it more than he usually did.

“I’m from London,” Aziraphale offered after a few minutes. “I have a lovely antiquarian bookshop there. Of course, I’d rather not actually sell any of my books, but I’m afraid it really is right there in the name. People do have expectations.”

Crowley made a noise of understanding.

“That’s how I got interested in the Maya, actually. I picked up a fascinating book by John Lloyd Stephens and an English chap named Catherwood. They were the first Western explorers to discover classical Maya sites and artifacts, and Catherwood did some beautiful illustrations of the stelae and such that they found. This was back in, oh, the 1840s.”

“Hm,” Crowley said.

“Anyway, the Maya have captured my attention ever since. They’re such an interesting people! And there’s so much left to discover! I definitely wouldn’t have thought back when I bought that book that it would eventually lead me all the way here, though. Life’s a funny old thing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed, mulling something over. At length, he ventured, “I’ve been in Mexico since ’36. Wanted a change of pace and then ended up stranded when the war started. Afterwards, I just never went back. Didn’t see the point in it.”

“Why’d you pick Mexico?” Aziraphale asked curiously. “It’s a bit far from Manchester.”

Crowley shrugged. “I wanted ‘far.’ There, er, wasn’t much left for me in England.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley stood before he could ask anything else, brushing the crumbs from his hands.

“We’ll have an early start tomorrow,” he said, crossing to his hammock and habitually double-checking the knots. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”


	3. Chapter 3

Crowley and Aziraphale made good time the following morning, though things began to slow again around midday, both as a result of Aziraphale’s steadily slowing pace and the fact that Crowley had decided the time had come to part ways with the muddy, horribly uneven road.

It was admittedly one of the worst roads in the area, but there were enough like it in Mexico that Crowley had long since decided against buying a car, even though he’d wanted one for a long time. With the way so many of the roads were, at least for now, travelling by foot took longer but was far more pleasurable.

Aziraphale, slogging through the undergrowth several paces behind Crowley, undoubtedly disagreed.

Whatever goodwill had been left over from last night had quickly evaporated in Crowley’s mind as it became even clearer that Aziraphale was not cut out for this sort of travel. Or, perhaps, any travel at all. It was a miracle he’d even made it to Villahermosa, really.

“Good lord in heaven,” Aziraphale’s voice floated irritably up to Crowley, accompanied by the sounds of every twig and branch in the forest snapping in sequence. It was a good thing they weren’t on a wildlife expedition, because anything remotely intelligent was likely miles away. Apart from Crowley, of course, who was trapped here.

“Can’t you be just a bit quieter?” Crowley asked, both pleading and exasperated, as he paused to look back at where Aziraphale was fighting his way through the branches of a sapodilla tree instead of simply walking around it as Crowley had. “You’re giving me a headache.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Aziraphale snapped, struggling through the branches and nearly tripping on a tree root. He looked cross and exhausted and overheated, if the red flush across his cheeks was anything to go by. At least he’d forgone the waistcoat and jacket today, though, and the trunk seemed to be mostly staying put on his back, where Crowley had rigged up a rope harness for it. One end was visible over Aziraphale’s shoulders, where it was contributing to his inability to duck under low-hanging branches. Not that that had likely been a strong suit of Aziraphale’s beforehand.

“Shall we take a short break?” Crowley asked, not needing one physically but thinking wistfully that the peace and quiet might be nice.

“Yes!” Aziraphale exclaimed, a little too readily, and when he reached Crowley he stumbled to a halt and leaned heavily against a nearby tree trunk.

“You should drink some water,” Crowley advised. The last thing he needed was his client getting heatstroke. It’d just make both of them more irritable.

Aziraphale shook his head miserably. “I’m out.”

“Hm.” Crowley eyed the flush on Aziraphale’s cheeks again and then reluctantly reached around and pulled his own aluminum water bottle from the side of his rucksack. He unscrewed the cap, took a long swig, and then held it out to Aziraphale. “Here. You need it.”

Aziraphale looked up, seemed to consider, and then shook his head.

“There’s a stream just up ahead,” Crowley said, continuing to hold the water bottle out. “Not more than, oh, forty-five minutes. And we’ll meet up with a trail there, and the going will be easier. This was a shortcut.”

“Short— _shortcut?_ ” Aziraphale echoed incredulously, though he did cautiously accept Crowley’s water bottle.

“Yeah. Had to make up time somewhere.”

“We’re behind schedule?” Aziraphale asked. Impossibly, it sounded like this was news to him.

“Yeah. Couple of hours is all.”

Aziraphale took a swig of water before responding. “When could we have possibly fallen behind schedule? We’ve been walking this whole time!”

“Walking slowly,” Crowley corrected, not bothering to mention that they’d also lost at least two hours the previous night. “It doesn’t really matter, though, unless you need to get to Palenque as soon as possible. We can always just get there a little later.”

Aziraphale seemed to ponder this, taking another swig of water and catching his breath. “Let’s stick to the original schedule as much as possible,” he decided at last, though it sounded like it cost him something. “The sooner we get there, the sooner this will be over.”

Crowley smirked. “Don’t forget about the trip back!”

Aziraphale looked a little ill.

“Don’t worry about it,” Crowley said with a grin, picking a tree of his own to lean against and letting it take some of the weight of his rucksack. “It gets easier the more you do it.”

Aziraphale didn’t look like he believed that at all, but he nodded all the same.

“The next bit’s uphill,” Crowley commented after a few minutes, when Aziraphale looked to have recovered somewhat. “We’ll take it slower. How about you tell me about your research as we go? Might keep your mind off it.” _Might also encourage you to stop trampling across every bush and misplaced branch loudly enough to wake the dead_ , he added silently to himself.

As he had in the bar in Villahermosa, Aziraphale positively brightened at the suggestion. “Oh, of course! What do you know about the Maya?”

“Practically nothing,” Crowley said, and started off again, hearing Aziraphale fall into step behind him.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, sounding thrilled to have such a captive and ignorant audience, “They were a people who lived in this area, all throughout the Yucatán peninsula. They built wondrous step pyramids, which makes some people think they must be ancient, like the Egyptians, but in truth their Classical period is roughly contemporaneous with the Roman Empire. By the time the Spanish invaded in 1519, the Maya had been largely eclipsed by the Aztecs, though there were still plenty of Maya settlements.”

“Fascinating,” Crowley said, mostly lying, as he picked his way carefully and nearly soundlessly around a clump of chaya bushes.

“But the most interesting part of their culture, at least to me, is their writing system! Their glyphs are so beautiful and intricate. Are you familiar with them? The Aztecs used the same system.”

“A little,” Crowley said, wincing as he heard Aziraphale plow noisily through what sounded like the very center of the chaya bush. Was he even paying attention to where Crowley was walking? “I’ve seen some of the stonework out here, and closer to the coast. Sort of square carvings, yeah? Lots of weird faces?”

“That’s it!” Aziraphale agreed brightly. “We’ve only partially deciphered the script; it must be nearly as complicated as Egyptian hieroglyphics! And the best and brightest scholars puzzled over those for millennia.”

“Mm,” Crowley said, scanning the forest ahead for the best route forward.

“The first part that was truly deciphered was their numerical system, and then their calendar. They used a base twenty system, as opposed to our current base ten system or the Babylonians’ base sixty, and they even independently invented the number zero! They wrote it with a small shell glyph.”

“Interesting,” Crowley said, and this time meant it a little. At least his client wasn’t complaining about the increasingly steep slope Crowley had begun to lead him up.

“And their calendar is so wondrously complicated. They had eighteen months of twenty days each, but then there was a second system within that that assigned each day of the week a number between one and thirteen. And since twenty days and thirteen numbers don’t match up evenly, the same day in each month would have a different number. But eventually, after about fifty-two years, a day with the same number and in the same month will recur, and that’s called a calendar round.”

“Sounds complicated,” Crowley commented, and then regretted it when he realized it might encourage Aziraphale to ramble onto a lengthy tangent about calendrical decipherment, which was just about the last thing he wanted to listen to.

“Oh, it is!” Aziraphale agreed. “I’ve studied it quite closely. But my main focus is the Mayan language itself. The leading scholar on the subject, Eric Thompson, believes it’s wholly logographic, meaning that one glyph represents one word. In many cases, those glyphs are also pictographic or ideographic, meaning that the glyph is a literal or symbolic depiction of what it’s describing. The glyph for ‘book,’ for instance, is a drawing of a book shown from the side, with individual pages—made from thin sheets of bark, actually—and jaguar-skin covers!”

“Huh,” Crowley said, ducking beneath a low-hanging branch and continuing the upward trek. “You read a lot of those books, then? With the jaguar-skin covers?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, and his tone was suddenly icy. “The Spanish burned them all.”

Crowley lurched to a halt, looking back at Aziraphale in genuine shock. “What, all of them?”

“All but three,” Aziraphale said moodily, swatting away the branch of a Mexican elm in his path. “Genealogies, maps, histories, herbals, books on law and astronomy and medicine and who knows what else—all burned. The Spanish missionaries thought they were works of the devil. They wanted to convert the natives to Christianity, so the first thing they did was destroy the existing culture.”

Crowley could only blink at Aziraphale, wondering how, in over a decade of living in Mexico, he had never heard of this.

“Moctezuma the Second, the Aztec emperor at the time, even had a royal library,” Aziraphale continued as he ground to a halt behind Crowley, somehow managing to look both miserable and angry at the same time. “The Spanish bishop de Landa had all the books brought together and burned. We know because he took meticulous notes about it. And do you know what he wrote about the Aztec scholars, as they watched their library burn?”

Crowley blinked at Aziraphale again, but he went ahead and answered his own question.

“He said they ‘regretted it to an amazing degree,’ and it caused them ‘much affliction.’” A muscle in Aziraphale’s jaw ticced, and Crowley did not doubt that if this bishop chap were here now, Aziraphale would have taken great pleasure in socking him.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley offered genuinely, both for the inconvenience to Aziraphale’s scholarly work and for the great injustice visited upon the people who had lived in this land centuries before he had even been born.

“Well, nothing to be done about it now,” Aziraphale said stiffly, and waved a hand towards Crowley. “Are we going to keep moving?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, and turned to carry on up the hill.

“The worst part about it,” Aziraphale continued sourly from behind Crowley as they continued their uphill trek, “is that de Landa and his priests are the best source we have for what the Maya culture was like. He took all those notes about the native heresies, you see. Even bothered to try to get an Aztec man to write down their alphabet, and that’s the closest thing to a bilingual text we have. It’s rubbish work.”

“Translating?” Crowley hazarded when Aziraphale didn’t elaborate.

“Relying on the notes of a man who led an Inquisition and tortured the very people I’m trying to study,” Aziraphale replied bitterly. “If he hadn’t been so thorough, we would have probably cracked their language by now. Or they could have just taught it to us.”

“Ah.”

“It wasn’t just books, either,” Aziraphale continued, though he had to space his words around his heavier breathing as they worked further up the steep incline. “You remember that serpent statue you mentioned the other day, in the bar? The one in the British Museum?”

“Yeah.”

“We think that’s one of the pieces Moctezuma gave to Cortés as a greeting gift. Or Cortés took as loot. Who knows. But there was plenty more sent back to Spain, at the beginning. Great silver and gold discs, armor and weapons and even clothing. Dürer saw some of the pieces, and even he was impressed by them, saying that they rejoiced his heart. But most of the metalwork ended up being melted down, and the jade artifacts were taken apart to make more _fashionable_ European pieces.” The edge was back in Aziraphale’s voice.

“That’s—that’s ridiculous,” replied Crowley, to whom this was a matter of pure economics. “Those things were treasure from a distant, unknown land! Surely they would have been more valuable intact?”

“One would think,” Aziraphale shot back sourly.

Crowley grunted in acknowledgement and turned his attention to picking his way around a large outcropping of rock. He waited for Aziraphale to continue his diatribe against the Spanish, but he appeared to be finished, or else too out of breath to mount as forceful a condemnation as befitted the subject.

In any case, he kept attention on the path and let the uneasy silence fill the space between them.


	4. Chapter 4

The third day, as far as Aziraphale was concerned, was the worst yet. Not only had the hills grown taller and more frequent, but the jungle had thickened around them, the air lying hot and humid beneath the arching canopy.

“How—much—further?” Aziraphale asked between huffing breaths, his legs and back already sore from the trek and carrying the heavy trunk.

“As far as we can go,” Crowley replied calmly from half a dozen paces ahead. Frustratingly, not only did he not appear more than slightly winded, but Aziraphale was certain that, if Crowley had been on his own, he would have reached Palenque long ago. “At this rate, I reckon we’ll get there, oh, midmorning tomorrow?” He paused to look back at Aziraphale. “Make that midday.”

Aziraphale gritted his teeth but didn’t reply. He kept trudging forward, leaves and branches smacking into him with every step, and it took him a moment to notice that Crowley hadn’t resumed walking. Instead, he was looking somewhere behind Aziraphale, a frown on his face.

“What?” Aziraphale asked, coming to a stop and looking back the way they’d come. Nothing seemed amiss to him, and he could barely even see the path they’d taken, mostly visible by the broken branches Aziraphale’s passage left behind.

He turned back to Crowley just as he brushed past Aziraphale, heading back the way they’d come. “Stay here.”

“What? Why?” Aziraphale asked, his frustration quickly giving way to alarm. “Where are you going?”

“Just stay here, okay?” Crowley repeated, a tad sharply, and then he vanished into the trees, his footsteps suddenly even quieter than usual.

Aziraphale watched him go with a trace of nervousness and then told himself that it was nothing to worry about, and he ought to enjoy this break. Lord knew Crowley didn’t seem fond of them.

So he pulled out his aluminum water bottle and took a long drink, and then used the end of his sleeve to mop up the worst of the sweat beading on his brow. All the while, he looked nervously around at the thick forest, trying not to think about how, if Crowley simply didn’t come back, Aziraphale would likely never make it out of this jungle.

When Crowley still hadn’t returned after nearly fifteen minutes, this worry became significantly more prominent. In the distance, Aziraphale heard the howls of what he thought were monkeys, and the screeching calls of several unknown birds.

He was seriously considering trying to find Crowley when his guide suddenly reappeared, moving so soundlessly that Aziraphale jumped in surprise and then flushed slightly with embarrassment.

“It’s just me,” Crowley said belatedly, and held out a small green fruit from a bundle in his arms. “Fancy an avocado?”

“Oh! Ah…certainly,” Aziraphale said, taking it from Crowley.

“I found some guava too. Put it in my bag; we can have it for dinner.”

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Aziraphale, relieved to have something other than jerky and hardtack to look forward to, even if he hadn’t the faintest idea what guava was. “Er, was that why you left?”

Crowley shook his head as he pulled his rucksack from his shoulder and set about stuffing the avocados in his arms into various pockets. “Thought I saw something. Found some fruit trees instead.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, a little alarmed by this response. “Saw something like what?”

“Well,” Crowley began, leaning his rucksack against a nearby tree so he could open the main flap and fish around for something inside, “there’s more than you and I in this jungle, you know. Jaguars, tapirs, crocodiles, you name it.”

“Jaguars,” Aziraphale repeated.

“Well, where do you think the jaguar-skin covers of those books of yours came from?”

Aziraphale drew himself up haughtily, but could think of no good response. He’d already learned several times on this trip that academic knowledge did not always translate well into real-world knowledge, and frankly he was ready for the universe to stop pointing this out to him.

“I wouldn’t worry too much; there aren’t many of them,” Crowley said, and proceeded to pull some sort of enormous sheathed knife from his pack.

Aziraphale’s eyes grew round as Crowley carefully pulled the blade from the leather sheath, revealing a long machete. “Is that—that for the jaguars?”

Crowley looked over at Aziraphale with something like amusement. “No, it’s for the jungle. It gets thicker from here on out.”

Aziraphale blinked at his guide in disbelief. _“Thicker?_ It hasn’t been thick _this whole time?_ ”

Crowley chuckled a bit, and when he looked up again he smiled broadly, the expression looking suddenly quite lovely on his face. “Welcome to Mexico.”

  


* * *

  


They were deep in the jungle when the light began to fade, dusk creeping steadily closer. As Crowley had predicted, the forest had grown denser and thicker, and he had begun slashing away at the undergrowth to cut them a path.

Theoretically, this should have meant that it was easier going, but Aziraphale’s strength had all but left him, and he was still swatting away branches and leaves with every step.

“Are we going to stop soon?” Aziraphale called ahead anxiously, feeling a little ill from all the exertion. “It’s getting dark.”

Crowley only briefly paused, the machete coming to a momentary standstill as its owner squinted up at the sky. “Another half hour, I think,” he said. “Come on, just a bit further.”

“How much longer to Palenque?”

“Oh, another half-day or so,” Crowley replied, his words muffled slightly as he returned to slashing at the leaves and vines, his strokes skillful and practiced.

“Surely we can get there half an hour later?” Aziraphale asked plaintively. “I can barely feel my shoulders anymore.”

“Then carry the trunk for a little while.”

Aziraphale made a noise of protest but grudgingly slowed to a halt and started fiddling with the rope harness that kept the heavy trunk bound to his back. “I’m going to need your help to get it off, then,” he called after Crowley.

He started tugging at the knots he could reach as he heard the slashing cease and the sound of Crowley approaching.

“Stop,” Crowley said suddenly.

“What?” Aziraphale asked, abandoning the knots and throwing his hands up in exasperation. “You _just_ told me to—”

“No, _stop_ ,” Crowley said, and it was only then that Aziraphale registered the urgency and dead seriousness in his guide’s voice, and the fact that Crowley’s golden eyes had locked onto something over Aziraphale’s left shoulder. “Don’t move.”

Aziraphale drew a sharp breath and froze, suddenly realizing what was happening. He had never seen Crowley look so focused, like a raptor zeroing in on a field mouse, and it frightened him a great deal. “What—what is it?” Aziraphale whispered, wishing suddenly that he hadn’t thrown his hands up, because they had frozen there, hanging in the air. “What do I do?”

In front of him, Crowley took a very slow, very careful step forward and lifted a hand until it was reaching out to Aziraphale, palm up. “Take my hand. Very slowly.”

Aziraphale had already been sweating from the intense heat of the jungle and the exertion of the trek, but he felt himself break out anew as he moved both of his hands slowly towards Crowley’s, not sure which of them was in more danger.

“Good, good. Easy does it,” Crowley said, leaning a bit closer so that his offered hand was that much nearer to Aziraphale. His golden eyes never left the space over Aziraphale’s shoulder.

Barely daring to breathe, Aziraphale slowly moved his hands closer until they’d closed over Crowley’s. Back in the bar, Aziraphale had thought that the callouses on Crowley’s palms were a sign of crudeness, but he knew now that they were the mark of lived experience, and he was suddenly very glad they were there.

Crowley began slowly withdrawing his hand, drawing Aziraphale with him.

“Come closer,” he said, his eyes still locked on whatever was behind Aziraphale. Aziraphale didn’t think he’d blinked this entire time. “Slowly.”

Aziraphale swallowed heavily and moved closer, taking small, nervous steps towards his guide.

“Good, good, keep coming,” Crowley said evenly, and when Aziraphale was right in front of him he reached out and put his other hand, still holding the machete, on Aziraphale’s upper arm and pushed him slowly to one side. “Get behind me.”

His heart hammering in his chest, Aziraphale complied, and once he’d inched past Crowley he slowly turned around, steeling himself to see whatever fearsome creature had nearly gotten the better of him.

Except that there was nothing there.

Aziraphale blinked. Where he’d been standing, there was a drooping bush, several trees with sun-dappled foliage, and the undergrowth beyond, but no lurking jaguar or crocodile.

He looked at Crowley in incomprehension, expecting his guide to burst into laughter at how gullible he was. Except that Crowley was still taut, his eyes locked on the patch of empty jungle and one arm raised in front of Aziraphale, as though to prevent him from moving forward again.

Unnerved, Aziraphale looked back at the forest, and that was when it moved.

Tucked among the branches of one of the trees, nearly invisible among the dappled leaves, was an enormous mottled tan serpent. It tilted its head towards Aziraphale, tawny eyes flashing.

Aziraphale couldn’t stop himself from jumping a little, and he automatically grabbed onto Crowley’s arm. “How did you see that?” he hissed.

“I was looking for it,” Crowley replied grimly. “Start moving in the direction we were going. Nothing too fast, but it shouldn’t bother us if we leave. I think you woke it up.”

“Woke it up?” Aziraphale whispered in alarm.

“It’s a fer-de-lance, a type of pit viper. They’re nocturnal. Its venom is potent enough to kill a human with a single bite, and they’re notoriously excitable when disturbed. Best to leave alone.”

Aziraphale made a very small noise in the back of his throat, looking in horror at the serpent tangled in the tree. Its tan, wedge-shaped head was still hovering immobile in the air, and its neck was crooked into an exaggerated _S_ shape, taut and poised to strike. Aziraphale remembered how he’d thrown his hands up in exasperation, and he realized that his left hand must have been hovering in the air just inches from the serpent’s waiting fangs.

“Move back, the way we were going,” Crowley repeated, his voice still—almost impossibly—calm. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Strangely, this assurance did help, and Aziraphale began edging back towards the patch of jungle Crowley had been slashing at most recently, keeping a hand locked around Crowley’s arm to make sure he was actually following.

Together, they retreated, Crowley keeping the machete low but at the ready and his eyes never leaving the serpent. Eventually, the tree and the deadly snake it held shifted out of view, and after another few paces Crowley fully lowered the machete, blinked, and turned around, the tension draining from his muscles at last.

“Sorry about that,” he said, and moved past Aziraphale to resume slashing at the foliage, cutting them a path that would lead them from this place.

Aziraphale could only stare after Crowley for a moment, his heart still beating a mile a minute and his hands moving to grasp the knots of the harness across his chest, feeling that they were safer there than at his sides.

“You—you saved my life,” Aziraphale said, the full weight of it settling on him. He could have died here, just now, in this wild jungle five thousand miles from home. This could have been the end. He wouldn’t have even reached Palenque.

Crowley only shrugged. “It’s what you pay me for. Snake whisperer, remember?”

Aziraphale looked wordlessly after his guide for a moment, and then he moved forward and laid a hand on Crowley’s arm, careful not to disturb the movement of the machete. “I—I mean it. Thank you.”

Crowley paused and looked over slightly, and Aziraphale was surprised to see a faint flush rise along the curve of his cheek. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Aziraphale blinked at him, not sure what to make of that and feeling like he still hadn’t properly conveyed his gratitude.

He was trying to work out what to say next when Crowley pulled away and resumed slashing at the brush, though a bit more slowly now. “We’ll go just a bit further and then stop for the night. Tomorrow, we’ll reach Palenque.”


	5. Chapter 5

When Aziraphale awoke from a nervous, fretful sleep the following morning, it was to a jungle bathed in fog.

It lay low, swathing the forest in glittering whiteness and soaking uncomfortably through Aziraphale’s clothes. While in some ways quite beautiful, Aziraphale’s first reaction was alarm, because he could barely see beyond his hammock and there was no sign of his guide.

“Crowley?” he whispered as loudly as he dared, the memory of the previous evening’s events coming back to him all at once.

There was no response.

Aziraphale swallowed heavily but remained where he was, looking nervously around at the thick fog and trying to convince himself that it wasn’t hiding another of those fer-de-lance snakes.

He took a moment to gather his courage and then reached over the edge of his hammock, fishing around until his hand encountered his boots. He pulled them up into the hammock, wiped off the dew and checked them for spiders, and then clumsily pulled them on, the hammock swaying wildly back and forth with his movements.

Once he’d gotten his boots at least mostly laced up, Aziraphale very carefully swung his feet down to the ground and hopped out of the hammock.

“Crowley?” he hissed again as he began to creep towards where Crowley’s hammock had hung the night before.

Somewhere in the distance, a monkey howled, the noise echoing eerily through the mist and making Aziraphale jump a little.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asked again, more loudly, and then the fog parted in front of him to reveal Crowley’s hammock, lying empty.

Aziraphale stared at it in horror, feeling panic beginning to sink its icy claws into him.

He hastily stepped away from the empty hammock, staring around at the clinging fog, and that was when he noticed Crowley’s pack, glistening with dew but sitting undisturbed at the foot of a nearby tree.

Aziraphale was still standing there, trying to convince himself that everything would be all right if he just didn’t panic, when he heard a twig snap nearby. He spun immediately, struggling to pinpoint the source of the noise, and then realized his mistake when this caused a significant rustling of its own, telegraphing his position.

“Aziraphale?” a voice from the mist asked, and it took Aziraphale a tense, frightful heartbeat to recognize it as Crowley’s.

“Oh!” Aziraphale gasped in relief, and a weak smile broke across his face as Crowley emerged from the fog, holding his sheathed machete but appearing unharmed. “Thank god. Where’d you go? I woke up and—and—”

“Sorry,” Crowley said, and sounded like he meant it. “Didn’t want to wake you. I heard something.”

“O—oh?” Aziraphale stammered, not liking the sound of that one bit. Even worse was the frown on Crowley’s face, which clearly indicated that Crowley didn’t like it either. “Did you find anything?”

“No.”

Aziraphale waited hopefully for some further reassurance, something about how it was probably nothing, or just the wind, but none was forthcoming.

“We should get going,” Crowley said, glancing over his shoulder and looking slightly unsettled, an expression Aziraphale hadn’t seen on him before and didn’t care for. “I don’t like this fog.”

Aziraphale nodded nervous agreement. “Is there—ah—time for breakfast before we go?”

“We can eat on the way,” Crowley said, still scanning the wall of fog encircling them. “Get your things together.”

  


* * *

  


The fog began to thin as the sun rose in the sky, slanting hazy golden beams of light through the foliage. Aziraphale felt his spirits rise along with it, and he put aside this morning’s fright in favor of focusing instead on what today held: Palenque! If nothing else, reaching the city would mean setting this bloody trunk down for a couple of days. And maybe Crowley would relax a bit.

His guide certainly needed to, and his quiet agitation was putting Aziraphale on edge as well, reminding him that, so long as they were in the jungle, they remained well in danger’s path.

Crowley had resumed hacking their way through the thick brush, but he seemed more distracted than yesterday, asking Aziraphale not to talk and repeatedly stopping to listen intently, scanning the fog still clinging to the tree trunks around them.

More than once, he told Aziraphale to wait where he was before vanishing into the fog. Aziraphale really wished he would stop doing this, as he took no pleasure from standing alone in the jungle wondering if Crowley was getting mauled by a jaguar. The fact that Crowley appeared equally uneasy with leaving him alone during these short absences did nothing to assuage Aziraphale’s anxiety.

On the fourth such occasion, Crowley was gone for so long that Aziraphale felt himself break into a nervous sweat, wondering what he ought to do if Crowley simply never returned.

But he did, and Aziraphale was about to greet him in relief when he saw the frown on his guide’s face.

“What is it?” Aziraphale asked nervously, wondering if he wanted to know the answer.

Crowley’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t respond right away. Then he said, “I think we’re being followed.”

Aziraphale forgot to draw his next breath. “What?”

“I keep hearing something behind us,” Crowley said, gesturing in the direction they had come even as he moved past Aziraphale. “Whatever it is, it’s not very quiet but it knows how to hide. I think the fog made it move closer, so it wouldn’t lose us.”

“O–oh?” Aziraphale stammered. “Do you think it’ll follow us to Palenque?”

Crowley was silent for another moment, adjusting his grip on the machete. “Hard to say. Depends on what it is, and how hungry it is.”

Aziraphale blinked at Crowley, horrified. “Well, should we—I don’t know—cover our tracks? Zig-zag about to try to lose it?” He cast about for other wilderness evasion techniques. “Walk in a stream for a while…?”

Crowley shook his head. “Not worth it. We’re almost to Palenque—just another hour or two. And this damned fog will lift sooner or later. Most things won’t attack in broad daylight, and at Palenque we can choose a defensible campsite. We’ll be harder to track when moving across bare stone, too.”

Aziraphale nodded in relief, reassured by the logic of this approach. Not for the first time, he felt an immense rush of gratitude to have someone as experienced as Crowley as his guide.

Crowley cast the fog behind them one last, distrustful look before turning back to Aziraphale and the jungle before them. “Let’s keep moving.”

  


* * *

  


Crowley had been to Palenque twice before, but never for more than a few hours. On the first such occasion, it had been unseasonably clear and sunny, the bright light casting the ruined city in dramatic relief. On his second trip, it had been pouring, and Crowley had taken refuge in one of the crumbling, vine-covered buildings.

Seeing it swathed in fog, though, Crowley thought that he might as well have never stepped foot here before.

The jungle had thinned around them as they walked, letting in more sunlight and burning away the thickest areas of fog. Likewise, the naturally swelling hills had fallen away about half a mile back, overtaken by irregular rises of rough, rocky soil. Crowley had immediately noted these unnatural aberrations, but so far Aziraphale appeared oblivious, continuing to slog along silently but determinedly after Crowley, leaning forward slightly under the weight of the trunk lashed to his back.

He had to admit, he was a little impressed Aziraphale had actually hauled that trunk all the way out here. So far as he knew, Aziraphale hadn’t discreetly dumped any of its contents along the way, and he hadn’t even asked Crowley to carry it for him, like any of his other clients would have. Apart from the fer-de-lance incident and his uneasy suspicion that they weren’t alone in the jungle, it had actually been a quite pleasant expedition. He was looking forward to their stay in Palenque.

“Watch where you’re putting your feet,” Crowley advised, recognizing the slope of a large hill to their right and veering towards it.

“How much longer?” Aziraphale asked tentatively from behind him, sounding resigned to an unfavorable answer.

“Oh, not long,” Crowley replied calmly, peering through the rapidly thinning mist for the narrow footpath he was looking for. He found it a moment later and began to lead Aziraphale along it, the ground growing even rockier underfoot as the path began to slope upwards.

They walked for several minutes, Aziraphale’s breathing picking up as they made their way up the slope, the trees thinning further and the mist falling away. Crowley increased his pace as they neared the top and then slowed to a stop as he reached the crest of the rocky outcropping.

Apart from a handful of bushes and some tawny grass, the boulder-strewn hilltop was barren, offering a remarkable view of the mist-swathed jungle before them. And there, rising out of the blanket of fog and draped in the golden light of the midday sun, was an enormous step pyramid.

Crowley grinned. Behind him, he heard labored breathing and the sounds of crunching stones, and he knew that Aziraphale had nearly reached the top.

He turned back so he could get a good look at Aziraphale’s expression as he saw the object of his archeological pilgrimage, but, a bit to his surprise, Aziraphale’s gaze fell on him instead.

“What—?” Aziraphale asked, a bit out of breath, looking wary of Crowley’s smile.

For some reason, this response just made Crowley’s grin broaden, and he took the opportunity to turn back to the view, sweeping one arm out dramatically. “Welcome to Palenque.”

This time he did hear the expected gasp, and when he looked back around the expression of wonder and disbelief was still on Aziraphale’s face.

Aziraphale took a few tentative steps forward, eyes locked on the pyramid, and then he looked over at Crowley. “Is this—are we really here?”

Crowley gave him an amused smile. “You tell me. You’re the expert.”

Aziraphale turned his gaze back to the pyramid, looking absolutely floored. “I mean—after all this time—I just can’t believe—well, I can believe it, I suppose. It looks just like Catherwood’s illustration!” Aziraphale lifted a hand towards the pyramid and then swung it slightly down and to the left, where a much lower, wider ruin was just visible above the fog-swathed jungle. “And that’s the palace! Oh, good lord, it’s beautiful.”

Crowley returned his own gaze to the vista, and thought that it truly was.

The pyramid, so far as Crowley could tell, had originally been perfectly symmetrical, but its steps had been worn down over the centuries, stones falling out of place and the jungle fully enveloping the bottom half. Vegetation continued all the way to the top, but more thinly, and Crowley could clearly see the apex of the pyramid, which terminated not in a perfect point like the pyramids of Egypt, but in a platform bearing a rectangular building with a pitched roof. Five entrances lined its front, each cast in shadow and separated from its neighbor by a square stone pillar, the whole facade forming a sort of colonnade.

Crowley could see less of the structure that Aziraphale had called the palace, given that it was mostly hidden in the jungle and shimmering white mist, but it had the same pitched roof and square pillars as the building atop the pyramid. The palace as a whole lay slightly behind the pyramid and to its left, as though the two mighty buildings had once formed two sides of some grand city square.

“This—this is wonderful,” Aziraphale whispered, looking very much like he wanted to stand there and take it in forever.

Amused, Crowley moved to stand next to him. He pointed off to his left and then to several places on his right. “You can see the top of another pyramid right there. And if you look over here, above that rock, there are a couple more. You can see them better when it’s not so foggy.”

Aziraphale made a wordless sound of delight, his gaze eagerly following Crowley’s pointing hand. “Oh, I see them! Oh, I really—I can’t—”

And then, surprising Crowley yet again, Aziraphale turned away from the beautiful view to look at him instead. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

“I—uh—” Crowley fumbled, working desperately to hold back a blush and trying not to think about how close Aziraphale was standing. A moment later, his floundering mind stumbled upon a thread of logic and latched onto it perhaps more strongly than was necessary. “You, ah, did hire me, you know. To do that exact thing.”

Then, to Crowley’s confusion, the blush that he’d been desperately holding back appeared on _Aziraphale’s_ cheeks, and his client hastily looked away, the wind tugging at his loose golden curls. “Ah, yes. I mean, of course. But, still, I appreciate it.”

“Er,” Crowley said, rapidly processing the exchange and trying to slow his pounding heart. He was still struggling to find something to say that wouldn’t embarrass himself when Aziraphale noisily cleared his throat.

“Palenque isn’t the real name of this city, you know. That’s just what the Spanish called it. The Maya, we think, called it Lakam Ha, which means ‘big water.’ There are supposed to be many streams that flow through or near the city.”

“Ah,” Crowley said in vague affirmation, wondering whether to mention that they’d definitely crossed at least two of them on the way.

“Anyway,” Aziraphale continued, a bit too loudly, “that’s the Temple of the Inscriptions.” He pointed to the pyramid in front of them, easily the tallest structure in sight. “That’s what all my research has been focused on. It’s where I need to go, that building on the top.” His gaze dropped to the fog-choked jungle lying between them and the temple. “Er, how do we get there?”

This, at least, was something Crowley knew how to respond to, and he immediately set about analyzing the dips and rises in the land spread out before them, forcing himself to focus wholly on the task. After a few moments, he turned and started down the outcropping the way they’d come. “This way.”

He heard Aziraphale following after him, and before long they were back in the jungle, the mist clinging to tree trunks in the middle distance.

As they walked, moving ever closer to the pyramid that marked the end of their journey, Crowley suddenly hoped that it took Aziraphale a good long while—maybe even several days—to find what he was looking for. And then, just as suddenly, Crowley remembered what Aziraphale had said about why he wanted to go to Palenque in the first place, back in the bar in Villahermosa: he was following up on an archeological lead about treasure.

Generally speaking, Crowley didn’t put much stock in the idea of stumbling upon hidden treasure—indeed, in all his years in the jungle, Crowley had yet to find anything more valuable than a gold ring—but he couldn’t deny that there was something appealing in the concept. And if hidden treasure existed anywhere, Palenque was certainly a good place to go looking for it. It was common knowledge that Mexico was flush with precious metals, and it held to reason that the ancient people who’d lived in these lands long ago had prized those metals as well. Likely most of the riches of Palenque and places like it had been plundered long ago, but there was still a chance that some cache had gone undiscovered all these years, only able to be unearthed by someone with an intimate knowledge of the original culture. Someone like the bookish anthropologist currently treading after Crowley through the jungle.

Crowley was not ashamed to admit that his interest in this client had been greatly piqued by the notion of discovering long-lost Maya treasure, but he also couldn’t deny that he’d barely given that treasure any thought over the last few days. He’d found himself preoccupied with thoughts of other things.

He was still mulling it over worriedly when they reached the base—or somewhere near the base—of the enormous pyramid that Aziraphale had called the Temple of the Inscriptions. The jungle merely sloped upwards to accommodate the sharp incline, but the ground was rough and quite muddy in places, and it wasn’t long before Crowley was having trouble finding dry places to put his feet. Behind him, based on the squishing and faint sounds of discomfort, Aziraphale wasn’t even trying.

The going didn’t improve much as they climbed higher, the jungle quickly falling away to be replaced with toppled blocks, many of which wobbled dangerously when any weight was put on them. Even when Crowley managed to find a stretch of what looked like the original steps, they were much taller than he was expecting, as though sized for someone twice his height.

Between that and the very steep incline, it was a punishing climb, and he had to repeatedly look over his shoulder to make sure Aziraphale was still following. He was, though he’d had to lean so far forward to compensate for the weight of the trunk on his back that he was bracing his hands on the higher steps.

“You all right?” Crowley called down, feeling a bit vertiginous at the steepness of the drop below him.

“Fine,” Aziraphale replied shortly, though Crowley didn’t doubt that he wouldn’t have been half so reasonable if the object of his quest hadn’t lain at the top of the pyramid.

He waited for Aziraphale to catch up a bit and then resumed the climb himself, navigating around the ruined steps and encroaching forest as best he could.

At last, he climbed the final step and found himself standing before the row of wide square pillars that formed the front of the small building perched atop the pyramid. Now that he was closer, he could see that the pillars bore deep relief carvings, badly damaged in places but, remarkably, still visible after over a millennium.

Crowley glanced down the pyramid’s steps to see how Aziraphale was doing and then took a moment to catch his breath, looking out across the jungle. Overall, it was much the same view as the one he and Aziraphale had had from the outcropping, except that the temple provided a slightly higher vantage point and even more of the mist had burned away, revealing the irregular terrain that marked the shape of the long-buried city.

“Almost there!” he called encouragingly to Aziraphale when he glanced down again and saw his client taking a breather only a few steps from the top. “There are some carvings up here I’m sure you’ll want to look at.”

Aziraphale made a noise that managed to be both pained and determined at the same time, and he rallied himself and resumed climbing. As he neared the top, Crowley leaned closer and offered a hand. Aziraphale took it gratefully, and Crowley heaved him up the last step and onto the platform.

“Made it!” Crowley said brightly, watching as Aziraphale gazed around at the temple, his chest heaving and face alight with excitement.

Without even taking the time to catch his breath, Aziraphale made a beeline for the nearest pillar, which showed a woman in a beautifully detailed skirt. She was facing the viewer and holding a child in one arm, her other hand outstretched to grasp an object that no longer existed, the image torn away by the crumbling rock.

“This—I’ve seen drawings of this,” Aziraphale said between deep breaths, reaching out to place a hand gently on the rough stone surface, as though to prove to himself that it was real. “The First Mother, we think. A woman claiming royal lineage.”

Crowley shifted closer, looking intently at the carving and trying to figure out how on earth Aziraphale had possibly deduced that, but Aziraphale was already moving away, striding past the pillar into the space beyond. Crowley eyed the carving for another moment before following.

Beyond the row of square pillars, lying parallel with the front of the building, ran a narrow hallway with a pitched stone ceiling. The far side of the hallway—the wall that faced the pillars—held three equidistant doorways, but instead of making for any of them Aziraphale rushed to one of the stretches of wall between them. He sucked in a breath and reached out a hand to touch the wall with even greater reverence than he’d shown the carving of the woman.

Then he looked over at Crowley in amazement, his entire face lit up. “Just look at it! All of it, here! So delicate, nearly worn away but you can still see it!”

Crowley, who had no idea what Aziraphale was talking about, obediently walked over even as Aziraphale dashed off down the hallway, making for the stretch of wall on the other side of the center doorway.

“Ah! This one’s even better preserved!” Aziraphale crowed in delight.

Crowley looked over at him in puzzlement and then turned his attention back to the wall in front of him, which Aziraphale had been admiring just seconds before. It took him a moment before he saw the carvings, which had been cut in much shallower relief than those on the pillars. He leaned closer, peering at the twisting, abbreviated shapes until they arranged themselves into a neat grid of squares, each of which consisted of a baffling mixture of shapes and lines. After a moment more, he recognized it as writing, those mysterious Mayan glyphs that Aziraphale had been telling him about earlier.

He turned to ask Aziraphale what they said, but Aziraphale had bustled off again, this time making for the centermost of the three entrances that led into the second layer of the temple.

Crowley heard the sounds of footsteps and then another cry of unrestrained delight, and he padded after Aziraphale, feeling quite bemused. The doorway Aziraphale had passed through opened into a rectangular room that was wide but not very deep, the same pitched stone ceiling rising above them. The room appeared to have absolutely nothing of interest in it, apart from the back wall itself, which Aziraphale was currently fawning over, having evidently found more of the strange square glyphs.

Crowley looked around the space again, taking in the dust and dead leaves and trying to figure out what this archaeological lead of Aziraphale’s was supposed to be. From his estimation of the size and shape of the building, this unremarkable room filled a majority of the space atop of the pyramid, and there was clearly nothing here.

Next to the wall, Aziraphale turned back to Crowley and started tugging at the rope harness keeping the trunk lashed to his back. “Say, could you help me get this off? I need my supplies.”

Crowley nodded and did as he was asked, moving over and loosening the knots on the harness until the trunk came free. He lifted it from Aziraphale’s back and carefully set it on the flagstone floor as Aziraphale straightened up and stretched his shoulders, wincing a little.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale offered, and then turned eagerly back to the wall, lifting a hand to one of the glyphs.

Before he could become too engrossed in them, Crowley cleared his throat. “So, ah, where’s this treasure you were talking about?”

Aziraphale looked back at him with a slightly amused expression on his face. “Treasure? My dear boy, this _is_ the treasure!”

Crowley blinked. “This what?”

“The _writing!”_ Aziraphale exclaimed, briefly turning back to the inscription on the wall behind him. “These three inscriptions—two on the outer wall, and the third here—are all one piece of writing, a document or declaration of some sort. It’s the longest known Mayan inscription, over 600 glyphs altogether! If there’s a key to decoding the language, it will almost certainly be found here.”

Crowley tried to sort through that, taken aback. “But you said something about having a hunch. Back in the bar. You said you had information about secret treasure.”

“A hunch, yes!” Aziraphale said quickly, looking delighted. “I think perhaps the Mayan language might _not_ be fully logographic, like Thompson thinks, but partially syllabic. That alphabet I was telling you about—the one the bishop de Landa made—all the scholars think it’s poppycock but _I_ think maybe there’s something to it. It could be evidence of a syllabic or partially syllabic language, but I need more proof, and I thought I might find it here.”

Seeing Crowley’s confused expression, Aziraphale quickly knelt beside the trunk, unlatched the clasps, and opened the lid, blocking Crowley’s view of the contents. Aziraphale rummaged around inside and produced an expensive-looking leather-bound book, which he waved in Crowley’s direction. “The trouble, you see, is that the print sources aren’t always accurate. Maudslay has some lovely plates, of course, and he saw Palenque firsthand, but so many of these things are copies of copies, you understand. Some of the drawings can’t be trusted at all—”

Crowley stared at Aziraphale’s trunk, which he had brought across the Atlantic and then insisted on carrying by hand across seventy miles of Mexican jungle in the middle of June. He started inching to one side.

“—and it’s hard to be absolutely certain which ones are accurate, especially since the Mayan language is so unlike our own. And overall there’s just so little material available, so there was no way for me to be certain—”

The interior of Aziraphale’s trunk came into view, and Crowley stopped in disbelief. Inside, stacked haphazardly and becoming increasingly visible as Aziraphale rummaged through the trunk distractedly, were piles upon piles of _books_. Off to one side, looking extremely squished and like they had been entirely added as an afterthought, or perhaps to provide some cushion for the books, was a bundle of clothes. And that was it.

Crowley couldn’t help it. He threw his head back and laughed.

“What?” Aziraphale demanded immediately in a slightly defensive, slightly worried tone. “I’m serious! Only a handful of explorers have ever been here, let alone anyone with real linguistic experience. There could be something that they missed! Some glyph that’s the key to solving it all!”

Crowley kept laughing, walking backwards until he found a wall to lean against, unable to believe it and yet _so able to believe it_ , because he’d only known Aziraphale for four days and yet this was somehow the most _Aziraphale_ thing he could have conceived. “There—there was never any treasure, was there?” he managed around chuckles.

“I’m telling you, this _is_ treasure!” Aziraphale protested heatedly. “If we can crack the Mayan language, we can learn so much about them! And learn it from _them_ , not secondhand from the Spanish priests who persecuted them to near extinction!”

Crowley’s chuckles died down, but he remained grinning at Aziraphale, undeterred by his client’s scowls.

“This is no laughing matter! It is really quite important that—”

“I know, I know,” Crowley said, continuing to grin at Aziraphale. “You just—you really came all this way to look at some old writing.”

“Why—why—yes.” Aziraphale drew himself up as far as he could while still sitting on the floor beside his trunk. “Is there a problem with that?”

“No, no,” Crowley said, unable to wipe the smile off his face. “It’s just—I’ve been a guide for over a decade now, and that’s hands down the best reason I’ve ever taken anyone anywhere.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to argue further, processed what Crowley had said, and then shut his mouth in surprise. “R—Really?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, feeling another round of laughter bubbling up. “You—you do your reading, I’m going to look around.” And then, before Aziraphale could berate him further, Crowley turned and strolled out of the room and back into the hallway, chuckling as he went.


	6. Chapter 6

Aziraphale spent much of the next few hours shifting between the three panels of inscriptions and eventually settling on the one in the center room as his main interest. It wasn’t long before the contents of his trunk were scattered throughout the room, books lying open and notebooks filled with scribbled notes occupying any available piece of floorspace.

Crowley, meanwhile, paced around the temple, though this was a bit challenging due to its modest dimensions. Apart from the long central room Aziraphale was in, there were only two other rooms, each rather small and filling out the back corners of the building.

The exact purpose of the temple, with its strange carvings and inscriptions, was quite mysterious to Crowley, but it was still interesting to pace around its rooms nonetheless. When he looked closely at the walls, for instance, in some places he could see flakes of faded stucco, and he realized that in its heyday this must have been a beautifully painted building, and perhaps the entire pyramid too.

When Crowley’s interest had waned in the small interior rooms, he stood on the platform outside and admired the view. The fog had long since entirely burned away, revealing the thick jungle below and the oddly square-shaped hills that punctuated the region. He wondered how large this city was, and how much of it was buried, overrun by the jungle as surely as the ancient cities of Egypt had been swallowed by the desert.

As he watched, his attention was suddenly drawn to a flash of movement in the trees, between the base of the pyramid and the large complex off to the right that Aziraphale had called the palace. Crowley stared at the spot, his sense of disquiet from that morning returning, and he wondered uneasily if something really had followed them to Palenque. The only creature in the jungle that he knew had a propensity for stalking its prey was the jaguar, but this was a long way to come even for a meal, and all this time Crowley hadn’t seen the telltale flash of dappled tawny fur.

In the end, Crowley decided that, regardless of whether or not he was imagining things, no jaguar was going to easily climb the pyramid’s crumbling steps, so he turned and strode back into the temple’s central room. Aziraphale was kneeling next to the inscription on the back wall, peering intently at one of the glyphs, a sheet of paper clutched in his free hand.

“How’s it going?” Crowley asked, peering around at the rest of the empty room curiously.

“Slowly,” Aziraphale reported, squinting at one of the glyphs near the edge of the inscription. “Hmm, is that a helmet? Shield? Sun-shield? Is that something?”

Crowley made an ambivalent noise and strolled into the righthand side of the room, trailing his hand along the stone wall. There was more of that flaking stucco here, spread across the large stone slabs.

By the inscription, Aziraphale climbed to his feet and started peering at one of the glyphs near the top, and then paused to retrieve a book from the chaos around him. “Shrine?” he mumbled to himself. “And that one’s… _chak_ something. _Chak-otoot_? Good lord, that could mean anything.”

Crowley raised his gaze until he was looking up at the pitched, corbeled ceiling. Even its mere shape was strange to him, the sides meeting in a stepped, inverted V shape instead of a perfect arch in the manner of the Romans. As he drew his gaze back down to one of the side walls, it caught on an irregular bit of stone that protruded from the place where the ceiling met the wall. Intrigued, Crowley moved closer and saw with some surprise that, though weathered and crumbling, it was recognizable as a stone hook.

Crowley tilted his head at it in interest and then, on a hunch, crossed the two meters to the opposite wall. Sure enough, he found a matching hook there. “I think there was a—a curtain or something over here,” he guessed aloud.

Aziraphale looked up briefly, one hand keeping his place in his book. “Hm?”

“There are these sort of…stone hooks,” Crowley explained. “Up there and there. You could tie a rope between them and hang a curtain or something. Partitioning off this side of the room. Just a thought.”

“Very possible,” Aziraphale said and turned back to the inscription. He frowned for a moment and then snapped the book shut and moved to a different section of the inscription, shifting some of the books and papers out of the way with his foot.

Crowley investigated the walls further, intrigued by the idea of puzzling out some of the temple’s mysteries using just what few clues remained. When he didn’t find anything else notable, he crossed to the other side of the rectangular room, picking his way carefully around Aziraphale’s exploded trunk.

He found a couple more hooks on this side, much to his delight, but there wasn’t much else to see. He spent some time inspecting the corbeled ceiling for any further clues, and then turned his attention to the floor, which consisted of square limestone slabs, each nearly a meter across.

_It must have been a bugger to drag those all the way up here_ , Crowley thought idly to himself as he swept his foot across the surface of one, clearing away the dust and a few dead leaves. _Must weigh a ton._

To his surprise, the passage of his foot revealed a small circular stone set into the larger square flagstone, near the edge. His interest piqued, Crowley kicked aside a few more leaves to reveal another inset circle only inches from the first. Now that he knew what to look for, he quickly noticed that this pattern continued on the other side of the square tile. In total, he found twelve such inset stone circles, six lined up along one edge of the square tile and six mirroring them on the opposite side, like rows of pawns on a chessboard.

Crowley immediately checked the other flagstones comprising the floor, but they were all smooth and unmarked, or at least as much as age had allowed them to be. Even with that slight damage, though, it was clear that none of the others had similar inset circular stones.

He paced back to the flagstone in question, turning his head a little as he looked down at the inset stones. They were too regular in shape and placement to have been added as repairs to chips in the main tile, and since they had only been added to this one tile he doubted they were decorative.

“Hey, Aziraphale, there are some weird circular tiles over here,” Crowley called over, thinking he might need some help cracking this particular mystery.

“Mm-hmm,” Aziraphale said, not looking away from where he was scrubbing some dirt from one of the stone glyphs with the side of his hand.

Crowley looked back down at the strange flagstone. _Perhaps it held something?_ he hazarded. If the circular tiles could be pried up, perhaps their niches would have been built-in stands for poles or staves of some description. And maybe those could have held a canopy or lanterns or something.

Crowley pondered over it for a moment more and then shrugged and walked over to Aziraphale. “Is it going any better?”

Aziraphale glanced up at him briefly. “There are definitely a lot of dates. And this one—” Aziraphale pointed to a squashed glyph that showed what looked like a river, “—has something to do with Venus. Thompson believes the Maya were obsessed with time, and that’s why they have such a complex calendar. They loved dating astronomical events, so perhaps this is some sort of…calendrical temple?”

“Hm,” said Crowley, who didn’t feel qualified to speak on such a topic but who privately felt that a pyramid was a lot of architectural effort to put into a building about calendars.

“Anyway, no luck yet with my theory,” Aziraphale continued, looking back at the inscription and frowning. He dropped his gaze to a book lying open next to him. “Perhaps there’s something I’m missing.”

“Hm,” Crowley said again. When Aziraphale said nothing more, he turned and glanced out the doorway and towards the square of sky visible beyond. It was still a few hours to sunset. “I’m going to look around outside, maybe see if I can find us something fresh to eat,” Crowley announced. “I think I remember seeing a grove of pawpaw trees last time I was here.”

“All right,” Aziraphale said, still frowning at the inscription.

Crowley nodded, mostly to himself, and headed over to where he’d dropped his rucksack next to Aziraphale’s trunk. He shrugged it onto his shoulders and strode into the hallway, squinting in the sudden brightness.

He stepped past the row of large square pillars, adjusting the placement of his rucksack straps as he went, and that was when a pair of strong arms grabbed him from behind and a hand clamped itself over his mouth.

  


* * *

  


“ _Cu—Cuta’ni? Chata? Ta? Tain’in?_ ” Aziraphale muttered, stringing together the syllables in the hopes that they would produce some recognizable Mayan word. “ _Tacu’in?_ ”

He sighed. There just wasn’t enough here to work with. He’d hoped more glyphs would have been legible in person than had been reproduced in his books, but so far he hadn’t been able to find more than a few small variations between the books and reality. Perhaps this was a hopeless quest. Perhaps de Landa’s so-called alphabet was just as worthless as everyone said it was.

From somewhere behind him, Aziraphale heard a scrape and a low, muffled noise.

Assuming it was Crowley starting down the steep temple steps, Aziraphale ignored it and continued to frown at the inscription in front of him. Here he was, gazing at the actual words chiseled right where the Maya scribes had placed them with such care and precision, and he felt no closer to understanding them than he had in London. Perhaps this whole trip—

Aziraphale broke off mid-thought as he heard a rapid flurry of footsteps behind him. He glanced idly over his shoulder, not quite sure what he was expecting to see but still mentally preoccupied with the inscription.

He therefore nearly jumped out of his skin when two fair-haired men shouldered their way through the doorway, the one in front dragging Crowley along with him. One burly arm was wrapped around Crowley’s chest, and his other hand was clamped securely over Crowley’s mouth, preventing him from shouting a warning. And Crowley certainly seemed to be trying to do just that, as well as twisting back and forth and kicking at his assailant’s legs, his golden eyes latching onto Aziraphale as soon as he came into view.

Aziraphale didn’t remember scrambling to his feet but suddenly he was there, his heart thudding in his chest as the two men moved further into the room, the one holding Crowley tightening his grip. The second man, as unpleasant-looking as the first, planted himself in the doorway, a long knife held at the ready.

“Give us the treasure,” the man who had Crowley demanded roughly in a thick German accent.

Aziraphale looked rapidly between the two strange men with their fair hair and dark green and grey clothing, struggling to piece together what was even happening, and how, and _why_ , despite everything else, Aziraphale’s mind had chosen to fixate on the fact that the two men seemed _familiar_. Then, all at once, it clicked.

“You—you were at the bar!” Aziraphale said, almost accusingly. “Playing dice! I remember you! You—you followed us all the way out here?” Distantly, some part of him realized that Crowley had been right all along, and that there had been something else in the jungle with them.

“Treasure!” the German barked again, and he pulled his hand from Crowley’s mouth long enough to reach for something at his belt.

“I didn’t see them—I’m sorry—” Crowley began, looking almost desperately at Aziraphale, but he broke off as his captor drew a small silver pistol and pressed the muzzle roughly into the side of Crowley’s head.

“Treasure or he dies,” the German barked, glaring at Aziraphale. By the door, his partner brandished the knife in a threatening but very practiced, almost military manner.

“But—” Aziraphale stammered, looking rapidly between the three and still struggling to process what was happening, the blood pounding in his ears. Then his gaze landed on Crowley and locked on, because surely Crowley, with all his expertise, must know what to do?

Except that Crowley was already staring at Aziraphale as though he was thinking the same thing, and his golden eyes were wide with fear.

“Schnell!” the man with the knife snapped irritably, not even bothering to leave his native German tongue. Not that Aziraphale needed a translation; he’d picked up enough German during the war to know—

And there was another useless realization, surfacing along with Aziraphale’s knowledge of the ratlines that had sprung up after the war, those international routes that had provided a quick means of escape from Germany for those who would have otherwise stood trial for war crimes. Many of those ratlines, Aziraphale knew, were said to have led to Central and South America.

Which meant that these two men, with their military bearing and war-era weapons, were not just misplaced Germans: they were Nazis. And if there was something Nazis liked just as much as murdering innocent people, it was amassing hordes of valuable objects that belonged to other people.

“Give us the treasure!” the Nazi holding Crowley barked, looking like he wasn’t enjoying repeating himself. “Now!”

“I—I—there isn’t any treasure!” Aziraphale spluttered, tearing his gaze from Crowley’s stricken expression and moving it to his captor. “I only came here to look at the writing.” He took a step back and put his hand on the wall behind him, feeling the unevenness of the glyphs. “I’m a scholar, not a treasure-hunter! I’m trying to decode the Mayan language!”

“It’s true,” Crowley put in weakly, but fell abruptly silent as his captor pressed the pistol’s muzzle harder against his skull, forcing him to bend his head away.

“We heard you talking about treasure,” the Nazi snarled in his thick accent. “Making…arrangements. Gold. Jade.”

His companion near the door nodded and raised the point of the knife threateningly. “Gold,” he agreed.

“You misunderstood!” Aziraphale cried, taking a step forward and stopping immediately when the two men tensed, Crowley making a faint noise of pain. “I—I’m a scholar!” Aziraphale tried again, and then hastily looked down, at the books scattered around his feet. “I can prove it!”

He reached down and, moving with exaggerated slowness to show he wasn’t reaching for a weapon, picked up one of the books he’d been referencing earlier. He paged through it rapidly until he landed on a large engraving of a set of Mayan glyphs.

“Here!” he said, turning the book around and holding it out in front of himself. “Glyphs! Writing, you see?” He pointed at the book and then back at the wall behind him. “Reading. Books—Bücher. It’s what I study.” He gestured to the trunk lying nearby, and the books and papers scattered around the room. “Nothing valuable.”

The Nazi holding Crowley frowned at the book in Aziraphale’s hand and then cast his comrade near the door a sideways glance. “Er sagt, es gibt keinen Schatz,” he conveyed. “Nur Bücher.”

Aziraphale nodded hasty agreement. “Nur Bücher,” he agreed. _No treasure. Only books_.

The Nazi near the door had a sour look on his face. He exchanged a dark glance with his companion, and then the Nazi holding the pistol to Crowley’s head looked back at Aziraphale and gave him a cold smile.

“Our mistake,” he said, and tightened his grip on the trigger of the pistol.

“No!” Aziraphale shouted, taking an instinctive step forward. In the Nazi’s grip, Crowley paled several shades, staring desperately at Aziraphale as though he was afraid to look away.

“No?” the Nazi asked, watching Aziraphale intently.

“Wait,” Aziraphale added, forcing himself to tear his gaze from Crowley and send it across his books and papers, casting about wildly for anything that might yet save them. “I—there _is_ treasure, you’re right, I just—”

Aziraphale’s desperate gaze fell to his left, and then to his right, to the space where Crowley had been standing just minutes earlier, while Aziraphale had inspected the inscription. The space where, inset into a large flagstone, he could see two rows of small circular tiles.

Aziraphale felt all the breath leave his body as a realization crashed into him. He raised a trembling hand to point to the flagstone. “Th—there.”

“Was?” the German by the door hissed. _What?_

“Here—look!” Aziraphale said in a quavering voice, hurrying over to the flagstone and dropping to his knees beside it, running his hands over the worn stone and praying for Crowley’s sake that he was right.

Behind him, he heard the two Nazis and their captive shift a meter closer to keep him in easy sight.

“These—these pegs,” Aziraphale stammered, digging his fingernails into the narrow space between one of the circular tiles and the main flagstone, “they come out, you see?” And, a bit to his astonishment, the first one did, coming loose surprisingly easily and pulling free, the wedge-shaped peg fitting snugly into the palm of his hand.

Trembling slightly from the fear and danger and unexpected excitement of the discovery, Aziraphale turned his gaze back to the flagstone and the small circular hole that the peg had just vacated. It appeared to pass straight through the flagstone, with no visible bottom.

Aziraphale searched the nearby floor until he found a small fragment of stone, and, after holding it up briefly so it was clear to the others what he was doing, he placed it above the circular hole and let go.

There was the briefest of delays, a sharp clatter, and then, a heartbeat later, several more clatters, each growing increasingly fainter.

Aziraphale looked up at the two Nazis and the captive Crowley, who was staring at him in sheer disbelief. “It’s—it’s hollow,” Aziraphale stammered, barely believing it himself. “There’s a passage here. And I bet you anything there’s treasure at the end of it.”


	7. Chapter 7

“You first,” the Nazi who’d grabbed Crowley growled, flicking the tip of the pistol from Aziraphale and Crowley to the darkened staircase they’d uncovered.

Crowley was still finding it difficult to believe they’d actually discovered something, much less that Aziraphale had had this incredible revelation even as Crowley had felt his breaths grow tight, certain each terrified heartbeat would be his last.

As far as Crowley was concerned, it was nothing short of a miracle, but deliverance was still far from assured. The Nazi had released Crowley so that he could help Aziraphale pry up the stone pegs and drag the heavy flagstone out of the way, but Crowley didn’t have any reason to believe he wouldn’t just shoot them both once their usefulness ended.

Still, every second they both kept breathing was a mercy, and Aziraphale seemed to be thinking something similar.

“Go,” the Nazi snapped, taking a warning step forward, and Crowley glanced nervously over at Aziraphale, who quickly moved towards the staircase that had lain beneath the flagstone.

About two steps down, Aziraphale hesitated and turned back, lifting a hand to indicate an object. “Do you have a torch?” he asked. “Or a lamp? Light? Licht?”

The Nazi with the pistol looked coolly at Aziraphale.

“I—I have a torch in my pack—” Crowley ventured, looking at where the other Nazi, standing a few feet behind his partner, was holding his confiscated rucksack.

“Hol die Laterne,” the first Nazi directed in German, not taking his eyes off of Crowley and Aziraphale.

The other Nazi made a gruff sound of acknowledgement, unceremoniously dropped Crowley’s pack, and tugged off his own. He started rummaging around in it.

As he did so, Crowley nervously glanced back at Aziraphale, mostly to reassure himself that he was still there. He was, and he gave Crowley a tight, worried smile.

“Licht,” the second Nazi said after a moment, moving closer and holding out a battered kerosene lantern.

Aziraphale took it gratefully and turned back to the staircase, his eyes briefly meeting Crowley’s again. Crowley was sure he must have looked stricken, but Aziraphale just adjusted his grip on the lantern’s bail and descended grimly into the darkness of the stairwell.

Once he was several steps down, Crowley steeled himself and followed.

It wasn’t long before his head sank below the level of the floor, and Crowley put his hands on either wall to brace himself, continuously ducking to avoid hitting his head on the slanting, corbeled ceiling. The stairs were steep, just as steep as those on the outside of the pyramid, and the darkness of the passage and the closeness of its walls made it feel very much like he was descending almost vertically, falling down the maw of some great beast and being swallowed alive.

He fixed his gaze on Aziraphale’s silhouette in front of him and the glow of the kerosene lantern beyond it, trying not to think about the sounds of heavy footsteps close behind him. The Nazis must have found a second light, because it threw long shadows past Crowley, the dark shapes twisting sickeningly across the rough stone walls.

Crowley was fighting down flares of panic brought on by claustrophobia when Aziraphale’s form shifted and vanished from view, taking the light with it.

“A—Aziraphale?” he hissed in alarm, not caring what the Germans thought he was saying.

“I’m here,” Aziraphale’s voice floated back to him, and a moment later he and his lantern appeared from the darkness. At the same time, the walls fell away and Crowley staggered out of the staircase into a very small room. “Just a landing,” Aziraphale explained, and then Crowley saw the second tunnel leading downwards, the staircase folding over on itself and resuming its sharp descent.

“Where do you think it goes?” Crowley asked unsteadily as Aziraphale started down the new staircase.

“No talking!” snapped the voice of the Nazi from only a few paces behind Crowley.

Crowley hastened to follow Aziraphale, and they resumed their descent in silence, the walls here growing wet from the ambient humidity and the air thick and stale.

It was hard to say how deep they went, but Crowley was breathing quite rapidly and shallowly, struggling to contain his mounting panic, when Aziraphale stopped again.

“This is the bottom,” Aziraphale announced. “There’s some sort of ledge here. A stone box or something.”

“Stop,” ordered the voice from behind them.

Crowley made it down the last step and found himself in a small square space no larger than the landing had been, the lamplight flickering unevenly on the walls. Aziraphale was only a meter away and Crowley immediately moved to his side, needing something solid to anchor himself with before he started well and truly hyperventilating. He had no doubt that, if he did, the Nazis would rather shoot him than give him a minute to recover.

To his surprise, Aziraphale quickly transferred the lantern to his far hand and put his newly freed arm around Crowley’s waist, drawing him closer and towards one side of the small room. “It’s all right,” he murmured, quietly enough that their captors still moving noisily down the stairs wouldn’t notice. “Deep breaths.”

Crowley nodded mutely and tried to do as he was told, leaning gratefully into Aziraphale’s solidity and feeling suddenly overwhelmed to have even been offered advice.

“There’s a stone box,” Aziraphale announced at regular volume as the first Nazi appeared in the stairwell, eyeing them suspiciously and keeping the pistol pointed in their direction. “Here,” Aziraphale said, lifting the lantern higher and indicating the space opposite the stairwell, where, indeed, a large stone box filled the rear of the small room. It was as wide as the landing and about a meter deep, and when the lamplight hit its corner the edge of the lid became visible.

The Nazi frowned at the box but waited for his companion, now wielding his knife in one hand and what appeared to be Crowley’s electric torch in the other, to reach the foot of the stairwell before inching closer. Keeping the pistol trained on Aziraphale, the Nazi reached over and pushed at the lid of the box with his other hand. It didn’t move.

By Aziraphale’s side, Crowley focused on drawing as steady and silent of breaths as he could.

“Open it,” the Nazi directed, stepping back and flicking the point of his pistol from Aziraphale and Crowley to the box.

Aziraphale hesitated and then obediently moved closer, dropping his arm from around Crowley as he did so. Crowley swallowed heavily but followed after him, the two Nazis crowding backwards into the space nearest the staircase as Aziraphale and Crowley approached the stone box.

Aziraphale ran his hands along the edge of the lip and pushed upwards experimentally. He glanced over at Crowley and then back at their captors. “We’ll have to pry it open,” he announced. “Do you have a crowbar or something?”

“I have one in my pack,” Crowley volunteered hesitantly.

This time, his offer was taken up on, and the Nazi with the knife retrieved the crowbar from Crowley’s pack, which he’d strung along one arm for the trip down. The other Nazi trained his pistol warningly on Aziraphale as the crowbar was handed to him. Seemingly unconcerned with this precaution, Aziraphale merely nodded his thanks and carefully set the kerosene lantern on the floor next to one of the side walls.

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, drew a deep breath, and then struck the end of the crowbar into the seam between the lid and the box.

It took several minutes of striking and prying before the lid began to move, Crowley pushing at the lid as Aziraphale forced the edge upwards. The Nazis offered no assistance, watching passively with weapons drawn as Aziraphale finally heaved the lid far enough up for Crowley to grab it.

Together, they tipped the heavy slab of stone upwards, until it was at about shoulder height, the sloped ceiling preventing them from pushing it any higher. Crowley secured his grip on the lid and then twisted his head around so he could look down into the interior of the box. A dry, foul smell drifted up to him, but he couldn’t make out anything else in the darkness, the only light coming from the electric torch somewhere behind him.

“Back!” the Nazi snapped, and a moment later Crowley suddenly took the full weight of the lid as Aziraphale was abruptly pulled backwards.

“Careful!” Aziraphale protested even as his place by the box was taken by the Nazi with the pistol.

The Nazi eyed Crowley suspiciously for a moment and then turned his attention to the box, pointing Crowley’s torch downwards to illuminate its contents.

Crowley looked too, and for a moment he was unable to make sense of the jumble of white shapes the torchlight picked out in high relief. Then he abruptly recognized a human skull and nearly dropped the lid, pulling back a few inches in shock. “Shit!”

“What is it?” Aziraphale asked immediately, in a worried and slightly frustrated tone of voice, and Crowley forced himself to look again, holding his breath against the smell. Jumbled inside the box, lying every which way and frequently overlapping in a manner they never would have in life, were hundreds of human bones. Such was the disorder that there were only a few places where Crowley could even make out the shape of a skeleton. He counted at least five skulls.

“It’s—ah—skeletons,” Crowley relayed, the arm that was bearing the brunt of the lid’s weight trembling a little. He looked over at the Nazi, expecting revulsion or at least permission to replace the lid, but his face was expressionless.

The Nazi panned the torch slowly across the skeletons and then reached forward with one hand to paw through the bones.

“Nothing,” he said harshly, and then turned to look back first at his companion and then at Aziraphale. “There is no treasure here. Kein Schatz. Only bones.”

“Let me look!” Aziraphale protested, stepping towards the box even as the Nazi’s pistol swung towards him.

Crowley twisted around in alarm, struggling to keep the lid open while trying to see what was happening behind him.

But then Aziraphale appeared beside him, the Nazi roughly shoving him back towards the box. “Find the treasure, or you die.”

“Yes, yes,” Aziraphale muttered, but he sounded stressed and more than a little worried as he reached up to take some of the weight of the lid. He exchanged a tense glance with Crowley and then picked up the crowbar from where it was resting against the side of the box. He gently prodded at the bones with its end, but the expression on his face was doubtful.

“Now!” the Nazi barked when Aziraphale’s investigation failed to unearth any treasure.

“Just—just wait a minute,” Aziraphale protested, hastily setting the crowbar back down and making sure Crowley had a good grip on the lid before turning around. “None of this makes sense. These bodies—this box—it’s too….too undignified a resting place. These stairs we just walked down—you saw them! They must have taken a long time to build.”

As Aziraphale spoke, his voice quick and slightly panicked, Crowley hastily lowered the stone lid back into place, trying not to think about how his corpse was likely to join those of the skeletons very soon. The stale smell of death rose up again as he replaced the lid, and he quickly turned his head to one side to avoid it as best he could.

“It—it just doesn’t make sense that those stairs exist only to lead to this box!” Aziraphale cried, still bravely trying to reason their way to survival. “There must be something else down here, another room or more stairs or something!”

Crowley, finishing setting the lid back on the box, froze. His gaze, still turned away from the box and its unpleasant contents, had fallen on one of the side walls of the small room. The wall was formed almost entirely from a single triangular slab of stone, and near one of its bottom corners, clearly illuminated by the lantern sitting on the floor beside it, was a small dark hole.

“Something like that?” Crowley asked immediately, pointing to the wall.

All eyes turned to him.

“There’s a—a hole there, I think,” Crowley stammered, moving towards it and then reversing course so he could grab the crowbar. He reached the wall and, aware that three sets of eyes were on him, dropped to his hands and knees. Now that he was closer, he could tell that it was definitely a hole, a place where part of the original slab of stone had broken away and not been repaired. He reached forward with the crowbar and, holding his breath, poked one end into the dark recess.

It went through with no resistance, and Crowley had pushed fully half of the crowbar through before he looked back up at Aziraphale and the Nazis, the former appearing astonished and the latter rather pleased.

“See!” Aziraphale pointed out quickly. “There’s another room, just like I said!”

The Nazi with the pistol gestured with it to the wall. “Then open it.”

Aziraphale nodded hastily and turned back to Crowley, the relief clear on his face. “Could you—could you pass me the crowbar, Crowley?”

Crowley did so, and Aziraphale set about examining the edges of the large triangular slab. As it took up most of the wall, it was about twice the size of the box’s lid and considerably thicker, and it took Aziraphale and Crowley nearly fifteen minutes to chip away at the mortar keeping it in place.

When they were ready to start prying it free, the Nazi with the knife had to stow his weapon and help, though he scowled menacingly at them all the while.

In the end, though, they pried one side of the slab far enough forward that a narrow rectangular gap appeared, passing through the wall to some darkened space beyond.

“Go first,” the Nazi with the pistol ordered, the muzzle of the weapon still pointed firmly at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale nodded and quickly collected the lantern from its spot on the floor, the flame beginning to burn low. He glanced briefly at Crowley, his expression torn between nervousness and excitement, and then he approached the gap, visibly steeled himself, and vanished into the darkness.


	8. Chapter 8

Crowley watched nervously as the light from Aziraphale’s lantern faded, its owner vanishing into the darkness beyond the triangular slab. Not keen on remaining alone with the Nazis any longer than absolutely necessary, Crowley cautiously approached the gap in the wall.

“Careful, there are some steps,” Aziraphale’s voice floated out of the darkness, and then he gasped.

Slightly alarmed, Crowley braced himself for the worst and stepped through the gap. He took a second step to steady himself and then came to an abrupt halt, gazing around at the room they’d uncovered.

It was wider than the tiny room with the stone box, thankfully, and the far side was lost in darkness. A short flight of steps led from the gap down to the sunken floor, and Aziraphale stood halfway down them, the lantern in his hand a glowing beacon in the darkness.

Reliefs of men and women wearing elaborate headdresses lined the walls, and polished black beams supported the lofty vaulted ceiling, but what was immediately, enchantingly arresting was how it all _sparkled_.

Over the centuries, water must have seeped through the pyramid and into the chamber, running down the walls and clinging to the ceiling, because its passage had left behind deposits of white limestone and calcium. The brilliant crystals coated every available surface, glimmering along the raised reliefs on the walls and hanging down from the corbeled ceiling in great twinkling stalactites.

“Oh, it’s _beautiful_ ,” Aziraphale breathed, moving down the last step and looking around at the glittering reliefs lining the walls. He raised the lantern higher, twisting the knob on the base to increase the height of the flame, spreading the circle of light further.

Crowley moved slowly down the crystal-coated steps after him, gazing around in amazement. He turned back to Aziraphale, but he had already moved further into the space, winding around the stalagmites littering the floor with the lantern held aloft.

Crowley quickened his stride and caught up with Aziraphale as, behind him, he heard the sounds of one of the Nazis forcing his way through the narrow gap.

“What is this place?” Crowley asked Aziraphale in an undertone, and then realized he wasn’t going to get an answer because the lamplight had just revealed the object that lay in the rear of the room, filling almost the entire space.

It was a massive rectangular limestone slab, easily over two meters wide and twice as tall, but unlike the triangular slab they’d just shifted this one was lying flat. It was resting atop an enormous block of stone nearly as large as it was, and which lifted it about a meter off the floor. Together, the slab and block looked for all the world like some enormous stone table, though what made them remarkable was that every inch of both were covered with beautiful carvings.

Crowley heard Aziraphale make a sound deep in his throat as he stopped at the foot of the strange table, holding the lantern as far out over the surface of the slab as he could, the deep relief carvings glittering with calcium deposits.

Crowley’s eyes tracked across the carved surface of the slab, struggling to interpret what he was seeing. Near the center of the carving, shown in profile and dressed in a skirt and elaborate headdress, was a young man. Except that, instead of standing tall and proud like the reliefs on the walls around them, this figure was mostly curled up, his head thrown back and knees drawn up nearly to his chest. The position was a fundamentally unstable one, and the man appeared on the edge of falling backwards, directly into the maw of some enormous beastly head that emerged from the bottom of the frame. Tongues of what might have been flowers or flames rose up from either side of the beastly head, reaching for the falling man. Above his curled form, appearing to sprout from the man’s abdomen, rose something Crowley thought was a tree, its peculiar square branches vanishing into the darkness beyond the circle of lamplight.

And there was so much more, including intricate designs scattered throughout the negative space and a detailed frame that enclosed the whole composition, but Crowley could make sense of none of it. The artistic style was utterly unfamiliar to him, so unlike anything he’d ever seen before, and yet he knew instinctively that every piece of the beautiful carving was important, placed there deliberately and with great care to convey some meaning that Crowley, removed from the artists by twelve hundred years and half a hemisphere, could not even hope to guess at.

Feeling that he was in the presence of something much larger than himself, Crowley reached tentatively towards the carving, but before he was able to touch it a heavy hand landed on his shoulder and pushed him roughly to the side.

The Nazi who’d grabbed him stopped abruptly as he saw the glittering carved surface of the slab, and he stared at it for a moment, appearing to make even less sense of it than Crowley had. “What is it?” he asked in his heavy German accent.

“I’m not sure,” Aziraphale replied breathlessly, gazing at the carving in amazement. “An altar, perhaps? Those bodies—the skeletons in the box—perhaps they were sacrifices.” He swung the lantern down towards the nearest part of the carving, where the monstrous head emerged from the bottom of the frame, preparing to swallow the falling figure. “This is the head of a jaguar, the symbol of Xibalba, the Maya underworld. And that—” Aziraphale moved the lantern further away from himself, gesturing to the tree with the strange square branches. “—that must be the world tree, a sort of _axis mundi_ , or connection between the Earth and the heavens, and there! Oh! A serpent in its branches. See its two heads? I wonder if that could be a representation of the sky—the words _serpent_ and _sky_ are the same in Mayan, you see.”

The Nazi, who seemed to grasp only about half of this, pointed at the figure in the center. “Who is he?”

“Oh, I—I don’t know,” Aziraphale said, and sounded dreadfully excited about it. “If this is an altar, perhaps he’s a stand-in for all of mankind, falling eternally into the jaws of the underworld. Except—” He paused, and Crowley took the opportunity to inch closer, wary of the Nazi but trying to get a better look at what Aziraphale was describing. “—there, coming out of his forehead. That’s the flaming axe of K’awil. It’s a marker of divinity. Oh! But then perhaps he isn’t _falling_ into the underworld at all. Perhaps he’s _rising from it_ , like the sun into a new day. A god being reborn into a new world. It’s a possibility.”

This too seemed to make very little sense to the German, and even less to his companion, who’d stopped behind Crowley.

The confusion of his audience didn’t appear to bother Aziraphale, who took a half-step back and then gasped and dropped to his knees. He eagerly ran his hand along the edge of the slab, which was easily eight inches thick and also covered with carvings. These, though, were organized into the orderly squares that Crowley now recognized as Mayan writing.

“Wait just a moment, it might explain itself here,” Aziraphale said excitedly, shifting to the left edge of the slab and holding the lantern close, brushing off the glimmering calcium deposits with one hand. “This one—this is a date! 8 Ahau, 13 Pop.”

Crowley eyed the glyph Aziraphale was looking at. “That’s a date?”

“Month and day,” Aziraphale explained quickly. “Then this glyph…hmm…but here’s another date!” Aziraphale shifted eagerly to his right, still reading along the edge of the slab. “6…oh, what’s that one called? Edznab. And 11 Yax.” Aziraphale raked his gaze along the rest of the text, and the Nazi even took a step back to let him do it, watching Aziraphale with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. “Those…it looks like those are the only dates, though.”

“Can’t you read anything else?” Crowley asked in surprise.

Aziraphale shook his head. “With my notes, maybe a few signs, but we know so few whole glyphs for certain. We just—we can hardly read anything, to be honest. So much of it was lost.”

“So, two dates,” Crowley restated, and looked again at the carving on the top of the stone slab, showing the man falling backwards into—or, according to Aziraphale, rising up from—the jaws of the underworld. “Birth and death?” he hazarded.

“I don’t think—” Aziraphale began, and then he went very quiet.

Crowley glanced at the Nazi, thinking he must have made some threatening movement, but he was just looking between Aziraphale and the glittering carving. His pistol was still aimed at Aziraphale, but Aziraphale appeared to have forgotten it was even there.

“You okay?” Crowley ventured after a moment, moving a bit closer.

“Shh!” Aziraphale said, waving a hand at him. “I’m counting.”

Crowley blinked.

“Eighty,” Aziraphale declared at last, looking up and then over at Crowley, excitement alight in his eyes. “There are about eighty years between those dates. That’s a lifetime.”

“So I—I was right?” Crowley asked, bemused.

Aziraphale turned back to the inscription, running his fingertips over the glyphs again. “This would mean ‘birth,’ then, and this one—oh! It could be ‘death.’ That sign there—I think that’s _och_. And the Mayan word for ‘to die’ is _och-b'ih_.” He looked back at Crowley, his breaths tightening with excitement. “If you’re right, then this—this isn’t an altar after all. And this isn’t a calendrical temple.” He looked back at the stone slab, one hand still touching the glyph for _death_. “It’s a tomb.”

That was a word the Nazi seemed to be familiar with, because he leapt on it. “Tomb? A burial?”

Aziraphale nodded, his gaze still riveted on the inscription. “And that means…if this is a funerary inscription, then _this_ glyph should be his name. These first two signs I don’t know, but this one…” Aziraphale paused. “This is the symbol for shield, _pakal_. I—I think that’s his name.” He looked back at Crowley then, appearing almost breathless. “I think his name is Pakal.”

The Nazi cleared his throat loudly. “If it is tomb, open it,” he directed, gesturing with the pistol at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale turned to look up at the Nazi, excitement still blazing in his eyes, and Crowley watched with something approaching horror as it crystalized into determination.

“No,” Aziraphale said and pushed himself to his feet, staring the Nazi in the eye.

“You will,” the Nazi countered, his voice hardening and finger tightening on the trigger of the pistol. “Open it.”

“No,” Aziraphale said again, his voice ringing. “This is a significant archaeological find, the greatest ever of the Maya. This carving is priceless. If we try to move it, we could break it. I refuse. You can shoot me if you like, but it won’t change anything.”

Crowley had taken a step forward before he even realized what he was doing, his heart suddenly thudding in his chest. “Azira—” he began, and then broke off when the pistol shifted to him instead.

“Does he refuse too?” the Nazi growled, his eyes locked on Aziraphale as Crowley’s gaze fixed on the barrel of the pistol. At the same moment, he felt the other Nazi step up behind him and grab him by the arms, holding him there.

Crowley forced his gaze from the pistol to Aziraphale, well aware that he was trapped, and in that instant he watched a flicker of indecision flash across Aziraphale’s face.

All at once, the full reality of what was happening crashed into Crowley, and he felt his breath catch in his throat. But then the surge of fear receded, replaced by a strange sense of relief. There would be no more bartering or cooperating with the Nazis. This was it. This was where he and Aziraphale were making their stand.

They had both been dodging death for the last hour, buying themselves more time with each miraculous discovery, but some part of Crowley had known that their luck would run out sooner or later. Nazis were not in the business of letting people go, even helpful people who found them treasure. He and Aziraphale had both been lost the moment they’d walked down that terrible staircase.

But that wasn’t to say he wasn’t grateful for the delay; he truly was. Because it was so much better to die here, in this beautiful glimmering room in the course of protecting something great, than to have died at the top of the temple over a misunderstanding about treasure that he didn’t even think existed. And, for that, he was deeply grateful to Aziraphale. It was a better death than he had ever deserved, and it came at the end of an incredible adventure with an unexpectedly wonderful companion. But good things weren’t meant to last forever, and they certainly never had for Crowley.

Crowley made a token effort to pull his arms away from the Nazi holding him, but he knew it was hopeless. Even if he could pull away, he would not be able to dodge the bullet. So he closed his eyes, not wanting to see it coming.

“It—it’s all right,” he told Aziraphale, his voice cracking. He braced himself for the end.

“No!” Aziraphale exclaimed immediately, and Crowley’s eyes flew open in surprise, tears already brimming there. Aziraphale took a step closer, his free hand held out pleadingly towards the Nazi with the pistol. “No, please. Let him go. He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Then open the tomb!” the Nazi with the pistol levelled at Crowley’s chest snarled, sounding fed up.

“I—I—but—fine,” Aziraphale managed, looking like it cost him something. “I’ll do it. Just let him go, please.”

The Nazi jerked his head towards Crowley, who was staring at Aziraphale in genuine disbelief, wondering if he’d heard correctly. The Nazi holding him released him and pushed him roughly towards Aziraphale.

Once he’d staggered close enough, Aziraphale reached out with his free hand and grabbed Crowley, pulling him behind him.

“What—what are you doing?” Crowley stammered.

“Saving your life,” Aziraphale replied tensely, stepping more fully in front of Crowley and forcing the pistol’s focus to shift to him instead.

“But they—they’ll just shoot us anyway!” Crowley whispered fiercely, deciding that Aziraphale must not fully understand the situation. “After we open it!”

“Maybe,” Aziraphale countered, but the uncertainty was plain in his voice.

“Schnell!” the Nazi barked crossly, the pistol remaining trained on Aziraphale. “Open it!”

“Don’t,” Crowley said, and meant it, but Aziraphale only turned back to him and put a hand on Crowley’s arm, the other still holding the kerosene lantern.

“Please, Crowley. Do as they say.”

“You can’t be serious,” Crowley hissed incredulously, his heart still racing in his chest. “You said it yourself, this thing is priceless!”

“Yes, well, then be careful with it. Where’d that crowbar go?”

Crowley wanted to argue more, but over Aziraphale’s shoulder he could see the increasing impatience on the Nazis’ faces, and he didn’t want to test them any more than they already had.

So he just shook his head and did as he was told, applying himself to the task of shifting the carved slab with a dedication he didn’t feel. Aziraphale retrieved the crowbar and within minutes they were back to pushing and prying, but the slab was enormous and even with both of them putting all their weight on the crowbar they couldn’t get it to shift more than a centimeter.

Crowley was beginning to think this was a blessing in disguise—whatever was under the slab was safe so long as it was impossible to reach—but after a few more minutes the Nazi with the pistol came over and shook the gun at them.

“You. Go there,” he directed, pointing with the pistol to the far side of the slab, where there was a shadowy space visible between it and the back wall. “We push, you lift.”

Aziraphale turned back to the Nazis, breathing heavily. “I don’t think that will work—” he began, and broke off when the pistol came to a stop only inches from his nose.

“Do it, or you die. Both of you.”

Despite the presence of the pistol, Aziraphale looked a bit like he wanted to argue some more, but in the end he only nodded and turned back to Crowley, looking defeated. “You heard him.”

Crowley’s gaze moved from Aziraphale to the Nazi and back again, still not understanding why Aziraphale was complying with their captors.

Seeing Crowley’s expression, Aziraphale put a hand on his shoulder and led him wordlessly to one side of the slab, where there was a gap of less than a foot between its edge and the wall.

“Come on, I’ll be right behind you,” Aziraphale told him gently, and when Crowley glanced back at him he saw that he had, purposefully or not, placed himself between Crowley and the pistol again.

Crowley shook his head but turned back to the slab nonetheless. Since it rested upon the larger block of stone, it came up to about waist height, and inching along the narrow gap between its edge and the glittering wall was no easy task.

After about a minute of awkward shuffling and balancing, Crowley neared the far end of the slab and the very rear of the room came into view.

In the light from Aziraphale’s lantern, Crowley could see that it was deeper than it had appeared earlier—about three meters—and was divided into two halves by a stone pier that ran from the center of the slab to the far wall. The pier itself was about a meter wide and just as tall, appearing about even in height with the stone block bearing the carved slab. More importantly, it divided this part of the room into two distinct pockets of space, each of which provided easy access to one of the back corners of the carved slab and its stone block.

Crowley finished squeezing past the carved slab and emerged into the nearer of the two pockets, relieved to have some freedom of movement again. As he glanced around the small space, he was surprised to see that there were more carvings of people on the walls here, their visages partially obscured by the glittering calcium deposits.

Aziraphale joined him a moment later, holding the lantern in one hand and the crowbar in the other. He too noticed the reliefs on the walls, and though he looked like he would have liked to examine them further, he instead glanced over at where the Nazis were waiting on the far side of the carved slab, watching them closely.

Crowley followed his gaze. “One of us will want to be over there,” he said, gesturing to the pocket of space on the opposite side of the pier.

Aziraphale nodded. “I’ll go,” he volunteered, and handed the lantern and crowbar to Crowley. Climbing across the pier was more than a little awkward due to its height, but Aziraphale found a large stalagmite he could use as a foothold, and after a few false starts he succeeded in clambering atop it.

As Aziraphale lowered himself gracelessly to the floor on the other side of the pier, Crowley turned his attention back to the slab and the block bearing it. In addition to the carvings on the slab, he saw that the block bore reliefs too, showing the heads and shoulders of people wearing elaborate headdresses. From what he could tell, the carvings wrapped around the corner and continued along the side of the block, though it was hard to tell due to the closeness of the wall.

Crowley relayed this discovery to Aziraphale as he straightened up and set the lantern on the pier. “You can’t even see the carvings on the sides because of the walls, though. You’d think they could have just made the room a little bigger.”

Aziraphale didn’t reply for a moment, looking at the glimmering relief of a young man on the wall behind him, and then he turned towards Crowley and sighed heavily. “I don’t think we’re supposed to see them. None of this is meant for us; that’s why every door we came across was sealed. This place is for the gods.”

“No talking!” one of the Nazis snapped irritably, and when Crowley glanced over he saw that they’d stowed their weapons and placed their hands on the edge of the slab, preparing to push. Crowley was tempted to just refuse to help—especially since he and Aziraphale could now simply duck behind the block of stone and use it for cover—but Aziraphale muttered something to him about cooperating.

So when Aziraphale wedged the end of the crowbar into the gap between the carved slab and the stone block it rested upon, the body of the crowbar hovering above the stone pier, Crowley reluctantly joined him.

It was a full five minutes before the slab began to move, Crowley and Aziraphale using the crowbar to raise their end just high enough to reduce the friction and allow the Nazis to gain some ground in pushing.

As they did, the lid edged slowly closer to Aziraphale and Crowley, hanging out over the twin pockets of space but sliding smoothly onto the pier of stone separating the two cavities. Crowley realized then that this must have been its purpose all along, and very likely how the carved slab had been installed in the first place. It must have rested here, in this rear space where it could balance on the wide central pier, and when the time had come it had simply been slid forward into place.

Another ten minutes passed before a cry came from one of the Nazis. Crowley loosened his grip on the crowbar, sweating from the exertion, and looked over to see that, as the slab had slid steadily away from the enormous stone block it rested on, it had revealed a recessed space within the block.

“Schnell!” one of the Nazis called over excitedly, and Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged an unhappy glance before complying.

As more of the slab inched into Crowley and Aziraphale’s space, it seemed to slide a little easier, and after another twenty minutes of heaving and sweating and watching the flame of the kerosene lantern flicker lower they had pulled it nearly completely away from the block. This meant that the majority of the slab was now resting on the stone pier, and the space Aziraphale and Crowley had to stand in had shrunk until it was barely large enough to accommodate them. But the slab had been pulled far enough back to reveal almost the entirety of the stone block and, within it, a recessed space holding a polished stone sarcophagus.

Crowley set the crowbar down in relief, his arms and shoulders aching, but Aziraphale seemed more agitated than ever, peering towards the sarcophagus lid as best as he could with the entire length of the carved slab between him and it.

The Nazis said something between themselves and then one reached over and started pulling free the stone plugs holding the lid of the sarcophagus in place.

“Be careful!” Aziraphale said loudly, the discomfort clear in his voice, but his words went unheeded.

One of the Nazis pulled up the last peg, and then the two of them together heaved the sarcophagus lid up and to one side.

Crowley leaned forward as far as he could, intrigued despite himself, and noticed Aziraphale doing the same thing from the opposite side of the pier. From his angle, he could only see the foot of the sarcophagus, the interior walls of which appeared to be painted red.

“Cinnabar,” Aziraphale muttered, sounding distressed. “Associated with the east, and has a distinctive red color. Commonly sprinkled over the remains of royalty.”

The two Nazis grinned, and then one of them reached into the sarcophagus and pulled free a beautiful jade mask.

“That—put that back!” Aziraphale shouted immediately, but the Nazis ignored him, one of them producing a cloth bag and stowing the mask inside it. “That’s a historical artifact!”

The English-speaking Nazi drew his pistol from his belt and waved it threateningly in Aziraphale’s direction even as Aziraphale glanced rapidly around himself, evidently looking for a way to climb past the carved slab sitting between him and the open sarcophagus.

Alarmed, Crowley shot him a warning look, but Aziraphale only became more agitated as the Nazis drew more treasure from the sarcophagus, including a beaded collar, several bracelets, and a handful of rings, all made from jade.

By the time the Nazis tied their sack shut and started retreating, Aziraphale was almost in tears. “You can’t do this! Those need to be documented!”

The Nazi with the pistol laughed and exchanged an amused glance with his companion, who’d slung the sack of plundered treasure over one shoulder like a parody of Father Christmas. Then he turned back to where Aziraphale and Crowley were still trapped behind the carved slab. “Thank you for your…cooperation,” he said, and raised the pistol.

“Get down!” Crowley shouted, and ducked beneath the level of the slab as a sharp crack rang out, accompanied by the sound of crystal-coated stucco splintering.

There were two more gunshots and then silence, Crowley’s heart hammering as he crouched in the darkness of the stone cavity, the carved slab overhead. He strained to hear any sounds from the matching cavity on the other side of the pier, where Aziraphale was.

Instead, he heard a quick exchange in German followed by a short laugh, and then the sound of receding footsteps.

Crowley didn’t even dare to breathe for a long moment, struggling to get his racing heart under control. When several long moments had passed and he hadn’t heard any more footsteps, he whispered, “A—Aziraphale? Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale’s voice floated back, and a second later he heard Aziraphale stand up. “They’ve gone.”

Crowley moved slowly to his own feet, pausing to peer hesitantly over the top of the slab towards the open sarcophagus and, beyond it, the inky darkness that had swallowed the front portion of the room.

He straightened all the way up and moved his gaze to Aziraphale next, needing to confirm that he really was unhurt, and was in time to see Aziraphale squeeze himself into the narrow gap between the edge of the carved slab and the wall, beginning to work his way back towards the uncovered block of stone.

Crowley hastily moved to mirror him, grabbing the lantern and crowbar as he went. Together, they inched past the carved slab until they’d moved far enough alongside the block that they could peer into the open sarcophagus.

Inside, coated with the fine red dust that Aziraphale had identified as cinnabar, lay a skeleton. After unearthing the mess of bones in the box at the foot of the stairs, Crowley was relieved to see that this one was at least identifiable as a single complete skeleton, even if many of the bones had crumbled and shifted out of place over time. In all fairness, it wasn’t much to look at—likely it had appeared much more regal when still adorned in the jade mask and jewelry that the Nazis had just stolen—but, even so, it seemed to have a powerful effect on Aziraphale.

“What is it?” Crowley asked, looking over at where Aziraphale was gazing into the sarcophagus with a conflicted expression, still looking rather like he wanted to cry. “Is it him? The…what did you call him?”

“Pakal,” Aziraphale said softly. “Very probably a king of Palenque.”

“Was he, er, famous?” Crowley asked, feeling a bit useless.

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said, sounding wrecked. “We don’t know the names of any of the Maya kings and queens. We don’t know anything. The Spanish burned it all.”

“Ah,” Crowley said. After another moment of looking down at the skeleton, he decided there wasn’t anything more he could do here and resumed edging towards the front of the room.

Once he had stepped out into the main space, he quickly started towards the short flight of stairs, moving as quietly as he could and keeping one hand in front of the lantern to mask its brightness. He paused at the foot of the stairs, listening hard, and when he didn’t hear anything he crept silently up the steps and very cautiously stuck his head through the gap in the wall. The room with the stone box was quiet and empty, the only movement the flicker of the lamplight on the walls. There was no sign of the Nazis.

Crowley retreated and turned back to Aziraphale, the lantern suddenly beginning to waver in his hand.

“They—they’ve gone,” Crowley relayed to Aziraphale, who was still gazing into the now-darkened sarcophagus.

Then the full implication of this statement began to settle in, and Crowley felt himself start shaking with relief, all the suppressed emotion of the last few hours rising up at last. The Nazis had gone. They had gotten what they wanted and they had _let him and Aziraphale go_. They were free.

Not trusting his legs to support him, Crowley quickly moved to the bottom step and sat down on it, setting the lantern and crowbar down beside him.

“Good god, Aziraphale… We made it.” Crowley looked down at his trembling hands, stiff from their time working with the crowbar but still warm and responsive, and felt tears spring to his eyes.

By the sarcophagus, Aziraphale straightened up and started picking his way closer, little more than a silhouette in the darkness.

Crowley’s next breath was choked, and when he felt a tear run down his cheek he let it go unchecked, because it was wonderful, irrefutable proof that he was _alive_.

Less than an hour ago, he’d been so certain that his ticket had been punched for good, and that the last he would see of this world was this glimmering, crumbling tomb. But now, miraculously, he had been saved, and all those avenues that he’d thought had been closed to him forever were open again. He would be able to watch the sun set tonight, and then rise the next morning. He would get to leave Palenque and eat another meal and laugh at stupid jokes, and maybe one day he would even get to buy that car he’d always wanted. All these glorious possibilities, his once more.

And yet, this wondrous boon had come not through any cleverness or strength or tenacity on Crowley’s part. No, he had done nothing to earn this unexpected deliverance; instead, it had been gifted to him almost single-handedly by Aziraphale.

Aziraphale, who had kept fighting for both of them even when Crowley had given up. Aziraphale, who had bought them time and worked out the secrets of the temple. Aziraphale, who had repeatedly intervened to save Crowley’s life when anyone else would have stood by and let him get shot.

That same Aziraphale was striding towards him now, Crowley’s rucksack dangling from one hand.

Crowley watched him approach through bleary eyes, filled with unspeakable gratitude, sudden embarrassment at his tears, and some other, powerful emotion he didn’t know how to name.

He was struggling to rein in his tears when Aziraphale reached him and handed him his pack, an odd look on his face.

“This was on the floor over there,” Aziraphale said by way of explanation, and only then seemed to notice the state Crowley was in. “Are you all right?”

Crowley sniffled a little in embarrassment and nodded shakily. “Yeah, I just—” He forced himself to look up and meet Aziraphale’s gaze, his eyes burning despite his every effort to the contrary. “Thank you,” he said thickly. “I—I didn’t think we’d get out of this alive.”

Aziraphale’s expression softened, and he briefly put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder. “I didn’t either, but it looks like we have. We should go.” With these words, Aziraphale picked up the lantern from the step next to Crowley and started past him up the stairs.

Crowley looked up and around in alarm, still sniffling. “What? Now?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said simply, reaching the gap and peering through it much as Crowley had.

Crowley scrambled to his feet, grabbing the crowbar as he went and hastily shoving it in his pack. “But—surely we could give them a few more minutes to leave first,” he protested. “Even if they slid the floor tile at the top back into place, we could push it open from this side easily enough.”

Aziraphale didn’t respond, instead passing through the gap and taking the light with him. Not keen to be left alone in the tomb, Crowley hastened to follow.

The tight, steep staircase was marginally better walking up than down, though Crowley felt claustrophobia beginning to close in around him again, stealing his breath as surely as the exertion of the climb.

It was beginning to worsen when he noticed the stairwell brighten around them, ambient light softening the edges of the darkness. Aziraphale reached the floor of the temple not long after that, and he turned back to offer Crowley a hand up.

Crowley grabbed on gratefully and emerged into the center room of the temple, Aziraphale’s books and papers still strewn everywhere. There was no sign of the Nazis.

Crowley gulped in a breath of fresh air, relieved at the openness of the space and finding himself nearly brought to tears again by the sheer sweetness of the evening air.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Aziraphale asked, his gaze meeting Crowley’s with surprising levelness, and Crowley only then processed that he was still hanging onto Aziraphale’s hand.

“Y—yeah,” Crowley stammered, hastily letting go of Aziraphale’s hand and trying to slow his racing heartbeat and breaths. It was all over. They were safe. They’d made it.

For a moment Aziraphale just gazed at him, and Crowley hastily busied himself with looking around the room. “I’m glad,” Aziraphale stated and then paused, like he wanted to say more. Finally, he swallowed and said, “Now, stay here.”

And with that, Aziraphale turned and strode towards the temple’s exit.

Crowley’s head snapped around, a thrill of fear racing through him. “What? Where are you going? You can’t mean to—?”

“I’m getting those artifacts back,” Aziraphale stated grimly. “One way or another.”

“What? No!” Crowley cried, his heart leaping into his throat as he rushed after Aziraphale. He caught up to him between the carved square pillars and grabbed Aziraphale by the arm, spinning him back around. “You can’t be serious. They’ll kill you!”

“I have to try,” Aziraphale said with sudden resolve, pulling his arm from Crowley’s grip. “I’ve studied the Maya for years. This is one of the greatest finds anywhere in the Americas, and I won’t let those Nazis steal this history, like the Spanish did before them.”

“But they didn’t take everything!” Crowley protested, hastily stepping in front of Aziraphale and blocking his access to the stairs. “The temple’s still here, and the tomb, and those carvings! And the writing! That’s valuable, too!”

Aziraphale actually looked at him then, and a flicker of something like affection crossed his features, stealing some of the fire from his eyes. “Yes,” he said, and put a hand on Crowley’s arm. “It is. If I don’t come back, please go to the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City and tell them what we found. They’ll know my name.”

“You should tell them yourself!” Crowley countered desperately, grappling with the thought of losing Aziraphale so soon after they’d slipped from the jaws of certain death. “If—if you weren’t okay with the Nazis taking the treasure, then why did we help them open the tomb? It would have been impossible for them to do it by themselves, with that heavy lid.”

Aziraphale’s eyes softened further, a brilliant blue-green in the dying light. “Because you were there,” he said simply, and moved his hand a bit further up Crowley’s arm. “This is not your fight, Crowley, but it _is_ mine. I must do this. Please understand.”

Crowley could only gaze in horror at Aziraphale, his breaths coming fast and uneven.

The hand Aziraphale had on his arm lifted briefly and then hesitantly came to rest on Crowley’s cheek, cupping his face. “Thank you for everything,” Aziraphale said, and then he walked around Crowley and down the temple steps.

Crowley turned to stare after him, his heart thudding in his throat but his breath and voice failing him. With them went his courage, crumbling like it had every time Crowley had ever needed to call on it. He knew that he should go after Aziraphale, but he also knew that he was a coward, as much now as he’d ever been. He’d made a life out of running away, and it had served him well.

He could still feel the warmth of Aziraphale’s hand on his cheek.

Unable to watch Aziraphale hurrying down the temple steps, Crowley turned and strode agitatedly back into the center room. Seeing Aziraphale’s books and papers scattered everywhere wasn’t much better, though, so he set to nervous pacing instead, walking up to the hidden staircase and then turning to stride in the other direction, his heart still racing and hands trembling, feeling sick to his stomach.

The trouble—the real trouble—was that Aziraphale was right. This _wasn’t_ his fight. He wasn’t a historian, he didn’t care what the Spanish had done four hundred years ago, and he didn’t care if the names of the Maya kings were never discovered or if the artifacts from the tomb weren’t recovered, because those were just _things_. Wondrous, valuable, priceless things, but _things_ nonetheless.

What he did care about, as hard as it was to admit it to himself, was _Aziraphale_ , a living, breathing person who had shown Crowley a great deal of kindness in four short days and who possessed, as far as Crowley was concerned, more courage, intelligence, and selflessness than anyone else alive. He was the best person that Crowley had ever met, and he had just gone to his certain death.

And Crowley was going to wait here while that happened, safe in this ancient, crumbling temple, because he was a coward who had always cared more about his own skin than anyone else’s.

Crowley slowed to a stop and stared at the blank wall in front of him, wondering suddenly and with a tremor of fear if that was true. It had been, once. Now, he was not so sure.

Crowley stared at the wall for several long seconds, struggling to come to a decision. His hands were still shaking.

Then: “Shit.”

Crowley spun towards the doorway, tore his pack from his shoulders, and hastily rummaged around inside. His machete was not there—perhaps the Nazis had taken it with them—but the crowbar was, so he grabbed that instead.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Crowley cursed and, before he could think better of it, dashed for the temple stairs.


	9. Chapter 9

To Aziraphale’s relief and trepidation, it hadn’t been that hard to find the Nazis. They appeared to have been moving rather slowly and making no real effort to hide their tracks or lower their voices, and Aziraphale found them in the swath of jungle between the base of the pyramid and the large palace complex lying diagonal to it.

Aziraphale was by no stretch of the imagination a wilderness tracker, and he winced at every twig that crunched under his feet, but the Nazis seemed completely relaxed and unconcerned with their surroundings, chatting easily with each other in German and occasionally laughing.

Twilight was already descending on the jungle, and as Aziraphale crept closer, trying to stick to the shadows where possible, he wished that he’d thought to bring a weapon. Not that he’d had many options available to him. What was he thinking, really? The Nazis were armed with at least a pistol and a knife, and there were two of them. Perhaps Crowley really would be bringing the news of the tomb’s discovery to the National Institute alone.

He swallowed heavily at the thought, trying to forget the horrified, fearful look in Crowley’s golden eyes as Aziraphale had told him he was going after the artifacts. But he knew that he had to do this, at least had to try, or he would regret it for the rest of his life.

 _At least Crowley’s safe_ , Aziraphale reassured himself distractedly, quietly keeping pace with the Nazis. That was one good thing he’d done.

In front of him, the Nazi with the sack of stolen artifacts shifted it to his other shoulder, and Aziraphale identified him as the one who’d wielded the knife earlier. As best as he could tell, neither was currently holding a weapon, which was at least a mark in his favor.

Aziraphale eyed the sack, weighing his options. Unarmed as he was, he didn’t like his odds in a fair fight, or even a dirty one. His best bet was to grab the artifacts and run, hopefully losing the Nazis in the jungle, but if he didn’t take the pistol out of play first then they would simply shoot him down. On the other hand, if he attacked the Nazi with the pistol first, the one with the sack might decide to run, and there was a good chance he’d make a clean escape with the artifacts.

Aziraphale spent a nervous minute fretting over the best course of action, all the while knowing that, the longer he took to decide, the more likely one of the Nazis would notice him inexpertly following them. He needed to act soon, if he wanted to have any chance at all.

So, when the pair stepped onto a slightly clearer patch of ground, the overgrown walls of the palace complex visible beyond them, Aziraphale gathered up his courage and ran for it.

There was no disguising his footsteps as he dashed forward, and the Nazis had just come to a stop, looking around for the source of the noise, when Aziraphale reached them. He crashed into the one carrying the sack of artifacts at full speed, knocking him over and straight into the second Nazi, who wasn’t able to leap out of the way fast enough.

All three of them hit the ground in a tangle of limbs, and Aziraphale wasted no time wrestling the bag from the grip of the squirming Nazi he’d tackled.

“Du Hurensohn,” the Nazi snarled, and no sooner had Aziraphale wrenched the sack free than he caught an elbow to the face, knocking him to one side and forcing the bag from his hand.

Aziraphale rolled away and came up on his hands and knees, preparing to focus his next effort on relieving the other Nazi of his pistol. Unfortunately, he’d already made it to his feet and was hastening to put space between himself and Aziraphale.

“Ich wusste, ich hätte dich früher töten sollen,” the other Nazi spat, and a heartbeat later he slammed into Aziraphale, grappling him to the ground.

Aziraphale fought back with everything he had, some of his military training coming back to him as he dodged a blow to the face and another which would have pinned one of his arms. He managed to kick his attacker in the shin and then surged upwards, landing a solid punch on the Nazi’s chin as he did so.

“Scheiße!” the Nazi swore as he was knocked mostly off of Aziraphale, and then he abruptly relented altogether, scrambling away.

The reason for this became clear a heartbeat later, when Aziraphale twisted his head around and found himself looking straight down the barrel of the other Nazi’s pistol.

“Auf Wiedersehen,” the Nazi said with a satisfied smile, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Aziraphale’s heart skipped a beat, but before he could react there came a wordless shout from off to his right and a lithe figure dashed out of the jungle and launched itself at the Nazi, tackling him with all the ferocity of a panther.

Aziraphale ducked automatically as the crack of a gunshot rang out, followed by the sound of something heavy crashing to the ground. When his world didn’t explode in pain, Aziraphale hastily looked up, and his eyes locked on the sack of artifacts resting on the mossy ground nearby.

He surged towards it, but he only made it halfway there before the other Nazi slammed into him again, sending them both back to the ground.

Aziraphale kicked, elbowed, and shouldered everywhere he could, trying to wrestle the other man off of him. From nearby, he heard another gunshot and the sound of Crowley swearing.

Aziraphale managed to partially wriggle away from his assailant and then hastily twisted his head around, suddenly needing more than anything to make sure Crowley was all right.

He caught a glimpse of Crowley wrenching the pistol from the Nazi’s grip and hurling it into the jungle, and then his vision exploded in grey static as a blow landed hard on his cheek, forcing his head the other way and flooding his mouth with the taste of blood.

Aziraphale dragged his lagging concentration back to his assailant just in time to knock aside another blow with his forearm, willing the ringing in his ears to recede.

Evidently tiring of the fistfight, the Nazi reached for the knife at his belt, pulling away slightly as he did so. Seeing his opportunity, Aziraphale hastily curled one leg up and kicked hard at his opponent’s stomach, forcing him up and away from him.

This worked even better than expected, the Nazi landing hard on the ground nearby, but Aziraphale knew it was only a moment’s reprieve. He spent his precious seconds scrambling to his hands and knees and glancing around urgently for Crowley.

He found him several paces away, dodging wild swings from what appeared to be his own machete, which the other Nazi had somehow gotten ahold of. Even more surprisingly, Crowley was clutching the bag of artifacts to his chest. Aziraphale stared at him for a breathless moment, suddenly remembering how effortlessly Crowley had always managed to vanish into the jungle, and seeing in that instant a means to protect both Crowley and the artifacts from further harm.

Then Aziraphale’s gaze dropped to the ground, where, not a meter away, Crowley’s crowbar laid.

Aziraphale lunged for it just as he saw the flash of a knife off to his side. “Crowley, run!” he shouted, and felt his hand close around the cool metal of the crowbar.

  


* * *

  


Crowley danced wildly backwards as the Nazi swung again, hearing the whistle of the machete through the air only inches from where his arms were clutching the sack of artifacts to his chest. Off to his left, he could see Aziraphale struggling with the other Nazi, but fortunately he appeared to have grabbed the crowbar that Crowley had dropped earlier, so at least he was armed.

The Nazi lashed out again, and Crowley decided to take Aziraphale’s advice. He turned tail and ran.

The ruins of the palace were nearby, half-buried in the jungle, and Crowley ran towards them, hearing the sounds of close pursuit. He forced his legs to go as fast as they possibly could, clutching the bag to his chest and springing nimbly over the muddiest patches of ground.

He spotted a gap in the stone wall ahead of him and leapt through it, landing a bit unevenly as he skidded to a halt to avoid crashing into a second wall beyond it. This part of the ruin was a hallway of some description, though the ceiling and upper portions of the walls had long since collapsed, leaving it open to the sky.

Crowley dashed down the hallway's length, weaving around the bushes and small trees that had grown up between the shattered floor tiles, and that was when he realized he was no longer being followed. He staggered to a halt and spun around, scanning the jungle-choked ruins for any signs of movement.

When he didn’t see any, he realized that the Nazi must have doubled back to help his companion finish off Aziraphale first.

 _Shit_ , Crowley thought, and began dashing back the way he’d come, still clutching the bag to his chest. He’d hoped that the possibility of losing the treasure would have been enough to lure at least one of the Nazis away, leaving Aziraphale with a fairer fight or an opportunity to get away.

As he approached the opening in the wall he’d leapt through, Crowley slowed his pace, softening his footsteps and cautiously sticking his head around the edge of the crumbling wall. This turned out to have been quite wise, because the moment his head cleared the wall there was a loud _crack!_ and the wall behind Crowley exploded, showering him with fragments of stucco.

Crowley ducked backwards and hastily reversed course, running flat-out down the hallway again. The Nazi, it appeared, had only been going back for his pistol.

A bush next to Crowley shook and splintered suddenly as another crack rang out, and Crowley hastily ducked into the first side entrance he encountered, his heart hammering in his chest.

There came the sound of quick, heavy footsteps behind him as Crowley leapt over a pile of rubble and, keeping low, dodged into another side corridor. These ruins, it was quickly becoming clear, were labyrinthine, and Crowley focused on lightening his step as he veered off at another angle, still clutching the sack to his chest. He dodged into another corridor, this one with its ceiling still intact, and ran along it for as short a time as possible before dashing off in another direction.

Somewhere nearby, he heard another gunshot, but nothing in his immediate vicinity exploded, so Crowley slowed for a moment, struggling to pinpoint the source of the noise and looking around himself wildly.

He was standing in a very small courtyard, or perhaps a room that simply no longer had a roof, a large tree filling one corner. Off to one side, easily the tallest structure in the ruins, rose a crumbling four-story square tower.

He saw no sign of the Nazi, though, so he crept slowly towards the tower, intending on using it for cover should his pursuer appear.

It was then that, in the middle distance, he heard Aziraphale shout, “Oi, Nazi!”

Crowley’s head snapped around in alarm, his arms automatically tensing around the sack still pressed to his chest.

Aziraphale shouted again, this time in German, and though Crowley didn’t understand the words, the taunting tone they were delivered in was clear enough.

 _What the hell is he doing?_ , Crowley thought in horror, even as he realized exactly what it was Aziraphale was doing: drawing the Nazi away from him.

Except that meant that Aziraphale intended on facing him alone, and the Nazi was currently armed with both a pistol and a machete. So far as he knew, Aziraphale had nothing more lethal than a crowbar. Crowley didn’t know anyone who would have liked those odds.

Aziraphale shouted again, and this time Crowley pinpointed the source of his voice, off to his right, in the direction of the darkening jungle. Fighting back a swear, Crowley gathered the bag of artifacts closer to his chest and set off through the ruins.


	10. Chapter 10

“Come and get me, you yellow-bellied, lily-livered jerry!” Aziraphale shouted, and then glanced around himself for any sign of movement.

He was standing at the junction of a corridor and a small room, both of which had long since lost their ceilings, the crumbling stones covered in vegetation. What remained of the walls were tall enough to hide a person, though, and the tumbled ruins had created a small, hidden hollow near where the room intersected the corridor, which Aziraphale had selected as the site of his ambush.

When he didn’t see any signs of the Nazi approaching, Aziraphale considered shouting again, restless with inaction. He’d heard several gunshots in the last few minutes, and he didn’t want to think about what it meant if one of them had found its mark.

After another moment’s deliberation, Aziraphale decided that giving away his position too clearly was just as bad as not giving it away well enough, and he hastily stepped backwards into the hollow he’d discovered. It was small—barely large enough to accommodate him—but its opening was partially blocked by a large, glossy-leaved bush, and he was confident his hiding spot would be well-camouflaged in the fading light of dusk.

Aziraphale planted his feet and adjusted his grip on the crowbar, holding it with both hands like a sword and trying to silence his breathing.

For the next minute he heard nothing, just the whisper of the wind through the leaves and the sound of the blood rushing through his ears, surely loud enough for anyone nearby to hear.

He was focusing on keeping his breaths long and slow when he heard a faint snap from only a few meters away, followed by the equally faint sound of wind rustling through fabric.

Aziraphale held his next breath, his palms growing sweaty around the crowbar as he pulled it back slightly, poised to strike.

Sooner than he expected, a shape passed by the bush, and Aziraphale immediately jumped forward and brought the crowbar around in a wide arc.

His late start turned out to be fortunate, though, because no sooner had he started his swing than he abruptly recognized his target as Crowley. He pulled his swing just in time, but Crowley still jumped back nearly a foot, clutching the sack of artifacts to his chest and sucking in a surprised breath.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale exclaimed, simultaneously very relieved to see that he was all right and horrified that he’d chosen this moment to appear. “What are you doing here?”

“What am _I_ —what are _you_ doing?” Crowley shot back, looking stressed and more than a little disheveled. “Trying to get yourself killed, shouting like that!”

“I’m not—” Aziraphale began, and then he quickly dropped his voice, glancing past Crowley for any sign of the Nazi. “I have a plan, but I can’t fit you in here with me. You’ll have to find someplace else to hide.”

“A plan?” Crowley hissed back, his expression incredulous. “You have a crowbar!”

“Shh!” Aziraphale said, feeling increasingly that the Nazi would appear at any moment, and then he really would be just a man with a crowbar. “Please, go find someplace to hide. I think there was another spot down the hallway, by that tree.”

Crowley looked like he wanted to argue, but he must have picked up on the urgency in Aziraphale’s voice, because he just shook his head and started off down the corridor in the direction Aziraphale had indicated, the sack of artifacts still clutched to his chest.

Aziraphale glanced around the room adjoining his hiding space and then hastily stepped back into the hollow, his heart racing.

It was less than a minute before he heard the sounds of footsteps again, this time coming from the direction of the corridor. Their owner was clearly trying to be quiet, but they were much less good at it than Crowley was, every step crinkling leaves and snapping twigs.

Aziraphale swallowed and adjusted his grip on the crowbar. This was it.

As had happened with Crowley, Aziraphale saw a shape pass beyond the bush, but this time Aziraphale was ready. He leapt out of his hiding place and brought the crowbar around with all of his strength.

He just had time to recognize that it was, indeed, the Nazi, before the crowbar collided with the blade of the machete, the impact sending a shudder up Aziraphale’s arms. He drew back, preparing to strike again, but the Nazi was faster, the blade of the machete slamming into the crowbar with such force that it was yanked from Aziraphale’s hands, clattering to the stone floor.

Aziraphale hastily stumbled backwards, into the open-air space that had once been a room, as he heard Crowley shout from further down the corridor.

The Nazi heard it too, and he spun just as Crowley sprang at him, the bag of artifacts discarded behind him on the corridor floor. Aziraphale shouted a warning, afraid the Nazi would simply bury the machete in Crowley’s stomach, but he couldn’t seem to bring the blade around in time. Instead, the Nazi brought his elbow back, slamming it into the side of Crowley’s face just as he reached him. He must have put a great deal of strength into the blow, because it knocked Crowley aside, throwing him into the corridor wall so hard he sank to the floor, blood leaking from one nostril.

Aziraphale rushed forward immediately, hoping to succeed in tackling the Nazi where Crowley had failed, but the Nazi spun back around just as quickly, drawing his pistol in one fluid movement and levelling it at Aziraphale. With his other hand, he kept the point of the machete aimed at where Crowley sat dazed at his feet.

Aziraphale was about to plow forward anyway, hoping to dodge past the pistol before they wound up at yet another stalemate, when he saw the serpent.

It was nestled into the vines choking the crumbling wall of the corridor, its triangular tan head turned with obvious interest towards the pistol and the pale, unprotected hand holding it.

Aziraphale staggered to a stop, forcing his gaze to jump from the serpent to the Nazi, who was glancing rapidly between him and Crowley. When he saw that neither of them were about to attack him, the corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk.

“You two…are very annoying.”

Aziraphale darted another glance to where the serpent was beginning to uncoil itself from the vines, its tawny eyes remaining fixed on the hand intruding into its space.

“Yes!” Aziraphale agreed quickly, realizing suddenly that all he had to do was keep the Nazi talking. As best as he could tell, the serpent eying the Nazi’s hand was the same species as the one that had nearly bitten him in the jungle, what Crowley had called a fer-de-lance. Venomous enough to kill a fully grown adult, Crowley had said. Notoriously unpredictable when disturbed. “Very annoying, us,” Aziraphale added hastily.

The Nazi narrowed his eyes at Aziraphale, evidently not knowing what to make of this response, and then he glanced back at Crowley, who had recovered enough to wipe the blood away from his nose, though he’d gone a little pale. He turned back to Aziraphale and tightened his finger on the trigger of the pistol.

“ _And!_ ” Aziraphale interjected quickly, taking a step forward and forcing himself to keep his gaze on the Nazi and not the serpent beside him. “Before you kill us, since we’re so very annoying, wouldn’t it be nice for us to give you the treasure you worked so hard for?”

Crowley looked over at Aziraphale in bewilderment, the machete still hovering in front of him.

“Yes, yes, I think we will,” Aziraphale continued hastily when the Nazi’s expression didn’t change. “Crowley, would you be a dear and give him the bag?”

“What?” Crowley protested, staring at Aziraphale with a mixture of defiance and disbelief. “No! After everything we just did—”

Aziraphale cleared his throat, gave the frowning Nazi as pleasant of a smile as he could manage, and turned his gaze back to Crowley, who still looked as though he thought Aziraphale had gone mad.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale began before trailing off, staring at his guide and struggling to convey just through eye contact that he had a plan, and Crowley needed to trust him. Then a flash of inspiration struck him. “ _I was looking for it,_ ” he said deliberately, staring at Crowley and willing him to understand, to remember the phrase from when Crowley had spotted the fer-de-lance in the forest only the day before, nearly invisible to Aziraphale’s inexperienced eyes.

But Crowley’s eyebrows only drew together in confusion, and he continued to stare at Aziraphale as though he understood that Aziraphale was trying to tell him something, but hadn’t a clue what.

Then, all at once, a spark of understanding leapt into existence in Crowley’s golden eyes and he drew a surprised breath. His gaze flicked upwards, towards the vegetation clinging to the stone walls of the ruins. Aziraphale didn’t think he could see the fer-de-lance from his position, but he certainly seemed to understand, because he nodded hastily and started inching backwards, towards the bag of treasure sitting only a meter behind him down the corridor.

“Nein,” the Nazi snapped, moving the machete to follow Crowley, and Aziraphale hastily stepped forward to distract him, well aware that if the Nazi moved backwards he’d be out of range of the serpent.

“Oh, it’s all right!” Aziraphale said brightly, hearing the tremor in his own voice. “Crowley will just bring it over to you, isn’t that right? Hand delivery and everything.”

The Nazi’s head snapped back around to him, and he raised the pistol a bit higher in warning. Among the vines, the serpent tensed, its attention clearly riveted on the Nazi’s hand.

In the corridor, Crowley hastily grabbed the sack of artifacts and obligingly scooted back to his original position, giving the Nazi a weak smile even as the machete remained pointed at him.

“Here,” Crowley said tentatively, and held the bag up.

The Nazi looked back and forth between the two of them again, clearly finding their behavior suspicious but unable to determine the nature of the ruse. After a moment, he adjusted his grip on the machete and slowly took the bag from Crowley. Crowley let it go without a fight, looking to Aziraphale for direction, and again the Nazi waited for a beat, wary of a trap.

In the vines, the serpent had fully coiled into a tight _S_ shape, its focus absolute.

“There,” Aziraphale said brightly, feeling panic begin to bubble up at the thought that the snake might not strike after all, or strike too late to help them. “Wasn’t that nice?”

The Nazi fixed his gaze on Aziraphale, a smile beginning to curl one corner of his mouth. “Yes,” he said smoothly. “Vielen Dank.”

He raised the pistol a fraction of an inch higher, focusing it on Aziraphale’s chest, and fired. In the same instant, the serpent’s head struck forward and Aziraphale threw himself to the side, dodging behind a pile of fallen masonry.

He hit the ground hard and stayed there, sucking in a breath as he heard a scream, another gunshot, a clatter, and the sounds of several impacts. He scrambled into a sitting position as there came a flurry of footsteps and Crowley skidded into view, the bag of artifacts clutched in his hand.

“Did he hit you?” Crowley asked immediately, the alarm and concern plain in his voice as he ducked behind the masonry with Aziraphale.

Aziraphale shifted to one side to give Crowley more room and then quickly patted himself down, verifying that the shot had indeed missed him. “No, I—I don’t think so.”

“Oh, thank god,” Crowley said, looking relieved even as he gave Aziraphale his own visual once-over.

Aziraphale moved into a crouch and glanced over the top of the heap of masonry. The Nazi was writhing on the ground in the corridor, clutching at his hand while the fer-de-lance watched from the wall, its dappled body poised to strike again. “Let’s move,” Aziraphale said as he turned back to Crowley.

Crowley looked all too willing to comply, and he followed close behind Aziraphale as he sprinted towards one of the other corridors leading from the ruined room. Aziraphale stopped once they’d reached a sturdy-looking section of wall, though, motioning to Crowley to wait.

“Aren’t we going?” Crowley asked anxiously, but Aziraphale inched back to the edge of the wall and glanced around it.

He had a reasonable view of the other corridor from here, and the Nazi appeared to be still lying on the ground there, thrashing about and grunting in pain but making no move to get up.

“How’s—ah—how’s it look?” Crowley asked.

“Not great for him,” Aziraphale reported honestly, turning back to Crowley. “How fast-acting is that venom?”

“Serious symptoms within an hour,” Crowley replied promptly. “Especially with how many times it bit him. And—ah—having an elevated heart rate increases the venom’s spread through the body.”

Aziraphale nodded and risked another glance around the corner. “Good.”

“What happened to the other one? With the knife?”

“I took care of him,” Aziraphale said vaguely, keeping his eyes trained on the Nazi in case he showed signs of wanting to get up and pursue them.

“What—really?” Crowley asked, sounding a little taken aback.

“Yeah,” Aziraphale confirmed, not particularly wanting to talk about it. By the opposite corridor, the Nazi started swearing and clutching at his hand. The fer-de-lance had left the shelter of the vines and was now slithering closer to its victim, its angular head darting back and forth. Aziraphale turned back to Crowley. “Let’s go.”

Crowley nodded and fell into step beside him as they started through the ruins, moving towards the rapidly darkening jungle.

They hadn’t gone very far before an awful scream came from behind them, followed by a loud curse in German.

Aziraphale grimaced briefly but didn’t say anything.

Only a moment later there was another scream, shorter and a bit fainter this time but just as terrible to listen to, and Crowley abruptly slowed beside him, an uncertain look on his face.

“This—this is going to sound really stupid,” Crowley said, “but there _is_ an antivenom for fer-de-lance bites. I even have some in my pack, for emergencies. Maybe not enough, but…”

Aziraphale stopped fully, looking at Crowley with a mixture of surprise and incredulity.

Seeing his expression, Crowley quickly looked away. “It’s stupid, I know. He just tried to kill us both. We should be thankful we’re even still alive.”

Aziraphale stared wordlessly at Crowley for a moment, and then he suddenly remembered where he was, and who he was with. Despite the last few hours having awakened some of Aziraphale’s dormant military training, this wasn’t the army. And Crowley—Crowley was a _guide_. It was quite literally his job to protect people from the dangers of the jungle, as he had protected Aziraphale from the other fer-de-lance. Out here in the wilderness, tens of miles from the nearest medical facility, offering emergency aid to someone in need must have been as natural to him as breathing.

Aziraphale put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder, suddenly needing Crowley to know that he understood where this impulse had come from, and did not fault him for it. “I don’t think it’s stupid, Crowley. Quite the contrary. But I do think, very sincerely, that he is absolutely not worth it.”

Crowley looked back around, and this time Aziraphale saw the conflict in his golden eyes, the tug between his sense of duty and his lived experience of the past few hours. He seemed reassured by Aziraphale’s words, though, because he nodded agreement, the conflict in his eyes easing. “I know. I just… Thank you.”

Aziraphale nodded in understanding, and when Crowley resumed walking again he fell into step beside him.

It was another few minutes before they reached the edge of the ruins, the only sounds the rushing of the wind through the trees and the whistling calls of a bird. Dusk was well and truly falling, the Temple of the Inscriptions visible as a dark shape through the trees.

They’d only gone a short way into the jungle before Crowley stopped again, this time holding the sack out to Aziraphale. “Here are your artifacts, by the way. Safe and sound, I hope.”

“I hope so, too,” Aziraphale agreed as he gratefully took the bag from Crowley, feeling a sudden belated rush of excitement. He quickly untied the knot at the top of the bag and then, holding it carefully in one hand, eagerly reached in with the other and withdrew a small jade pendant.

It was only two inches long, but despite its small stature it had been intricately carved into the shape of a head and torso. He held it out for Crowley to see while he glanced into the sack to make sure that the larger pieces, including the jade mask, were undamaged. This appeared to be the case, and Aziraphale allowed himself a relieved smile.

“Ready to go sit in some museum, eh?” Crowley remarked. “Greatest ever Maya discovery and all that?”

Aziraphale looked up at Crowley, still mentally delighting over the contents of the bag, and only then remembered that retrieving the artifacts had been _his_ idea all along. An idea that Crowley had desperately urged him to reconsider at the top of the temple steps, arguing that the cost could be quite high. And it very nearly had been.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, quickly returning the pendant to the bag. And then, before he could think better of it, he stepped closer and pulled Crowley into a tight hug. Crowley seemed surprised by the gesture, standing a little too stiffly before gradually softening and slowly wrapping his arms around Aziraphale in return.

“Thank you for coming after me,” Aziraphale told him, hoping that Crowley would recognize the sincere gratitude in his voice. “You—you really didn’t have to, but you saved my life. And these artifacts…” Aziraphale drew back far enough to show Crowley the bag again. “They belong to the world now. They can be properly studied and displayed, and not…not melted down or broken up like so many of Moctezuma’s pieces were. You helped do that.”

If anything, Crowley looked a little embarrassed at the thought. “I just—just wanted—” he began, and didn’t finish. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said at last.

Aziraphale gazed at Crowley, feeling an odd sort of warmth in his chest. “I’m glad you’re okay, too,” he said, and meant it.

The faint flush on Crowley’s cheeks deepened, and he quickly looked away, his hands nervously running over each other. “Oh, look at that, it’ll be dark soon,” he said hastily, and with rather too much interest. “We should, ah, go back to the temple and camp there for the night. If we wait too long, those steps will be hard to climb in the dark.”

Without waiting for a response, Crowley started off into the jungle, though he did pause to make sure Aziraphale was following him. And Aziraphale was, though with an amused smile.

“I’ll keep watch tonight,” Crowley announced as he led the way through the forest, “just in case anything’s about.”

“We can split watch,” Aziraphale corrected. His adrenaline was already beginning to wear off, revealing aches and bruises and a deep-seated fatigue, and he didn’t doubt that once they reached the top of the pyramid Crowley would be just as exhausted as he was.

A bit to his surprise, Crowley accepted this without argument, and together they set off into the darkening jungle.


	11. Chapter 11

When the sun rose the following morning, sending slanting beams of light across the temple porch, Crowley was fast asleep in the center room, his head resting on his rucksack. Although they’d agreed to get moving at dawn, Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to wake Crowley, who even in sleep looked exhausted. Besides, he’d only slept a few hours so far, having himself woken Aziraphale later than the agreed-upon hour, claiming he’d lost track of time.

So Aziraphale busied himself with packing most of his books and papers back into his trunk and then, when Crowley continued sleeping, moved back to the temple porch to take some final notes on the inscriptions there.

He was disappointed he wasn’t going to be able to stay longer, but the artifacts from the tomb needed to be delivered to the National Institute as soon as possible, and a proper expedition arranged. The hidden staircase and tomb would need to be meticulously documented and photographed, and, though Aziraphale would have normally been happy to help, archaeology had never been his area of expertise, and he was expected back in London soon. It was better that he use his remaining time here to make sure the project was put into good hands, and that the events of yesterday were properly documented.

Aziraphale was still working his way along the inscription to the left of the central doorway, taking notes and checking the glyphs against the plates in Maudslay’s book, when Crowley appeared in the doorway, as silent-footed as always.

He peered around blearily, still looking rather tired, and took in Aziraphale and the brightness of the day.

“You didn’t wake me,” he said, almost accusingly. “I thought we were going to pack things up at dawn.”

“Yes, sorry,” Aziraphale said, deciding to not even bother hiding the truth. “You looked like you really needed it.”

A look of surprise crossed Crowley’s face, followed by a faint blush. He looked away hastily, muttered something about his rucksack, and vanished back into the central room.

Aziraphale smiled and turned his attention back to the inscription, taking hastier notes this time.

Crowley reappeared less than ten minutes later, looking considerably more awake and, worse yet, fully packed.

“Oh no, are we leaving already?” Aziraphale asked in alarm, glancing longingly over at the inscription panel to the right of the door, which he’d yet to give more than a cursory glance.

“You’re the one who wanted to get back right away,” Crowley said mildly, raising a hand against the sunlight to peer out over the jungle spread beneath them. “Surprisingly good weather today. Should be a nice walk.”

“Mm-hmm,” Aziraphale said distractedly, hurrying over to the inscription to the right of the door. “Give me just five more minutes. I’m mostly…I have most of my things…” He trailed off, staring at the fifth glyph in this inscription, tucked away in the upper lefthand corner.

“What is it?” Crowley asked when Aziraphale failed to complete his sentence.

Aziraphale stared at the glyph. He’d seen it before, of course, in all the transcriptions, but he’d never been able to read it. It was a multi-part glyph, consisting of six discrete signs, and because of that Aziraphale had included it on his list of potential candidate glyphs for his phonetic hypothesis.

But there was something else about it. The first half of the glyph—the first three signs—he had seen before. Yesterday, on the beautifully carved sarcophagus lid.

“I—I need my notes,” Aziraphale stammered, and dashed into the central room. He had to partially unpack his trunk before he found the notebook he was looking for, and then he hurried back to the temple porch. Crowley had set his pack down near the top of the steps and sat down next to it, and he watched with interest as Aziraphale moved back to the inscription.

Aziraphale hastily flipped his notebook open to the section where he’d collected his hypotheses for the phonetic values of the signs, searching for the sign that matched the fourth one in this glyph, a square with a hatched pattern inset inside of it.

“Hatched, hatched—” Aziraphale muttered to himself, drawing his finger down the column of signs and finally coming to a stop on the correct one. A thrill of excitement raced through him as he looked at the tentative value he’d placed next to it: _Pa_.

The next sign, a squashed rectangle with a comb-like element inside of it, he hadn’t hazarded a true guess for, but he’d marked it with a note indicating a loose resemblance with one of the letters of de Landa’s alphabet.

Heart pounding, Aziraphale hastily flipped backwards in his notebook to the dog-eared page where he’d diligently copied out de Landa’s alphabet, dismissed for so long by scholars as utter poppycock.

He found the sign he was looking for almost immediately, a curved comb-like symbol that, while not encased in the same squashed rectangle, bore a distinct resemblance to the sign in the inscription in front of Aziraphale. And the value that de Landa had assigned it? _Ca_.

The last glyph—the final one in the sequence—was fairly common, and Aziraphale had hazarded several guesses in his notes, but his gaze was drawn to the first of such guesses: _La_.

“Pakal,” Aziraphale breathed, barely able to believe it. “It—it _is_ syllabic!”

“What is?” Crowley asked, and Aziraphale suddenly noticed that he’d moved to stand next to him, looking down at his scribbled notes with more interest than anyone apart from Aziraphale had ever shown them before.

“This—this right here,” Aziraphale said, pointing with a shaking hand to the glyph he’d just read. “See these three, to the left? They were on the sarcophagus lid in the tomb, I’m certain of it. I couldn’t read them, but _this_ …” Aziraphale moved his finger to the righthand portion of the glyph, those three innocent, neatly stacked signs that had just revealed so much to him. “This was one symbol, in the tomb. A square sign of a shield, specifically a hand-shield, and the word for that in Mayan is _pakal_.”

“You said that was his name, the bloke in the sarcophagus.”

“Yes! But this—this _also_ says _pakal_. Except it’s not one sign, you see, it’s three!”

Crowley looked closely and nodded slightly confused agreement, and some part of Aziraphale distantly registered that, against all odds, he still looked interested.

“So that means that the Maya used a mixed writing system,” Aziraphale continued excitedly. “They had larger, detailed signs and glyphs that they could use to show the literal meaning of an image, making it logographic and, more than that, ideographic. That’s what Thompson and all the rest have been saying for ages. Image equals word, like a picture of a bird means _bird_ , or a related concept like _flight_. But _this_ —this is syllabic. Like alphabetical, except that each consonant comes paired with a vowel. That’s been my theory, you see, because otherwise there are lots of signs that show up really frequently that just don’t make sense if they’re only being used ideographically. Like if the letter _A_ was a drawing of an apple; then, if you didn’t know English, you’d think apples were a really important aspect of our culture! But really we’d just be using a picture of an apple to signify the _sound_ of the letter _A_.”

“So they…wrote it both ways?” Crowley asked tentatively.

“Yes!” Aziraphale exclaimed. “ _Pakal_ was written in the tomb as a single logograph and ideograph—a literal drawing of a shield—but here it’s written syllabically; spelled out, if you will!” Something else jumped to Aziraphale’s mind, and he turned eagerly to Crowley. “Like the Egyptians! Ancient hieroglyphics are similar to this—you can write certain words lots of different ways, even leaving out letters and signs sometimes, because it’s fundamentally an _artistic_ language. There’s an aesthetic to it, making sure everything fits in the space you have allotted—really important when you’re working in stone—and that mattered more to them than something like consistent spelling!”

“Huh,” Crowley said, looking, quite honestly, rather impressed. “That’s really cool.”

Aziraphale blinked at him, a bit out of breath from his explanation, and couldn’t stop the faint “Is it?” that came out.

Crowley smiled at him then, warmly, and Aziraphale felt his pounding heart skip a beat. “Yeah, of course! I’d never heard of a syllabic language before. But I suppose it doesn’t make much sense to think everyone would write like we do.”

“Yes!” Aziraphale agreed, trying to convince himself that Crowley smiling at him was nothing to get excited over, and failing miserably.

“I’m glad you got to prove your theory,” Crowley added, gesturing at Aziraphale’s notebook. “That’s what you came here for, right? Evidence?”

Aziraphale nodded mutely.

“Well, then!” Crowley said, smiling at him brightly again. “Not a wasted trip after all!”

“Wasted?” Aziraphale echoed, feeling strongly that nothing could be further from the truth. “Not at all! It’s been more—well, more excitement than I’d thought—than I’ve had in a long time—” Aziraphale broke off and hastily busied himself with closing his notebook and shifting to inspect another portion of the inscription further along, putting some space between himself and Crowley. “Well, altogether too much excitement,” he settled on. “I’m a bit more the scholarly type, you see. Reading and deciphering from snug at home. I’m afraid I’m not—not cut out for the adventuring life like you are. Prowling through the jungle fending off wild animals and…and all that.” His voice faded.

“Oh, I’m really not, either,” Crowley said, and gave a short, nervous laugh. Aziraphale glanced over at him in surprise and something like hope, but Crowley had turned away and was walking slowly towards his pack at the top of the temple stairs. “I—I’ve run from every fight I’ve ever gotten myself into.”

“That’s not true,” Aziraphale protested quickly, taking a couple of steps after Crowley and nervously thumbing the worn edges of his notebook. “You came to help me yesterday. You didn’t need to do that.”

“Sure I did,” Crowley said vaguely, scratching the back of his neck and still not looking at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale frowned at him, wanting to press the point but not sure why Crowley was acting the way he was. “I’m sorry if I—” he began after a moment, but at the same time Crowley turned towards him.

“There’s something you should know,” Crowley said quickly, and then they both broke off.

“What?” Aziraphale asked, suddenly unsettled by the nervous and worried expression on Crowley’s face.

Crowley took a moment to respond, fixing his gaze on the pillar next to Aziraphale. “I—I lied earlier. About the war. I didn’t come to Mexico in ’36. I came here in ’39, right before the war began. And I wasn’t stranded here. I ran here when I saw that the war was going to happen, and was too ashamed to go back afterwards. I—I all but deserted. Millions of people died in that war, defending Britain—hell, defending the whole world—and I just…ran. I’m not—not brave. I’m not some hero, like you are. I’m sure you were an officer, and saved a lot of people. But all I did was…was let someone else go in my place.”

By the conclusion of this halting speech, Crowley looked a little like he might be ill, and he quickly turned and sat down on the top temple step, his face turned away.

Aziraphale could only gaze at him wordlessly for a moment, remembering the sharp fear that had flared in Crowley’s eyes so often yesterday, and the way his breaths had tightened in panic as they’d descended into the tomb, and how desperately he had pleaded with Aziraphale to let the Nazis leave with the artifacts. But he also remembered the way Crowley had fearlessly saved him from the fer-de-lance in the jungle; how, in the tomb, he’d closed his eyes and told Aziraphale brokenly that it was okay if the Nazis shot him; how he’d followed Aziraphale into danger only moments after trying to dissuade him; and how he’d considered offering a life-saving antidote to a man who had just tried to kill both of them, simply because it was within his power to do so; and Aziraphale knew, quite suddenly, that it was not cowardice that plagued Crowley, but kindness.

A little overwhelmed by the emotion that had risen in him, Aziraphale slowly moved closer and seated himself on the top step of the temple next to Crowley, the jungle spread out beneath them. For another long moment, he didn’t know what to say, searching for the right words.

Finally, he settled for, “I—I didn’t want to go either. To the war. I only served for the last year. And I—well, technically I was an officer, but not in the way you think. I was a chaplain. Wasn’t even allowed to carry a weapon.”

Crowley’s head turned a little at this, and he sniffled slightly, and Aziraphale realized with some alarm that he was crying, or very nearly about to. “Chaplain? Really?” he asked, his voice uneven.

Aziraphale gave him a sad smile, wanting very much to draw Crowley to him. “Yes. I had the training for it, after all. I’m not very religious anymore—I’m afraid the Spanish priests who burned the Maya libraries aren’t the only members of the cloth I take issue with—but I come from a very religious family. How else do you think I could have wound up with a name like ‘Aziraphale’?”

Crowley laughed a bit at that, and Aziraphale was heartened to hear it.

“But—really,” Aziraphale continued, “I don’t think any less of you for coming here. And those two Nazis down there—” he gestured with his head towards the jungle below, “—I bet they weren’t very pleased that they ran into the two of us. That you were already here in Mexico, lying in wait for them to arrive.”

The edge of Crowley’s mouth twisted upwards in the ghost of a smile. “I suppose. Though you did most of the actual…you know.”

Aziraphale grimaced. “Don’t remind me. Turns out, I’m a very bad chaplain.”

Crowley let out a laugh and sat back a little, wiping something from his far cheek as he did so, his eyes red.

“But I really do mean it,” Aziraphale pressed. “It’s been years since the war. The past is the past. Don’t let it stop you from going back to England.” Then Aziraphale abruptly realized what he’d just said and hastened to add, “If you wanted to go back, that is. I’m not saying that you do. I’m sure you’ve become quite accustomed to local life. You’re a very good guide, and you speak far better Spanish than I do. You’ve…you’ve likely made quite a home here. No sense leaving it for—well—no sense leaving it.”

“Oh,” Crowley said softly, and he finally looked over at Aziraphale, his red-rimmed eyes searching.

And, though he’d been trying to catch Crowley’s eye for the last few minutes, Aziraphale hastily looked away, feeling his face heat slightly.

“I—I think I might want to go back,” Crowley said after a moment, the hesitation clear in his voice. “Being a guide is interesting, but I’ve seen most of what there is to see in Mexico. The climate is a definite improvement, but the mosquitoes are awful.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale asked hopefully.

“Yeah,” Crowley agreed. “And no one around here can brew a decent cup of tea. And the terrible roads! I’ve always wanted a car, maybe a classic one, but there are so few places around here nice enough to even drive one.” There was levity in Crowley’s voice, but the hesitancy and stress were still there too, lurking just beneath the surface.

Aziraphale thought—hoped—he knew why that hesitancy was there, and he decided with some trepidation that it was time to find out if he was right.

“I mentioned it because I was wondering…” Aziraphale began before pausing and switching tacks. “What I’m saying—what I’m trying to say is—I’ve dreadfully enjoyed your company, and, well, if you _did_ want to go back to England, you could always…you could…well. You could…come back with me. If you wanted. You don’t have to.”

He felt more than saw Crowley turn to look at him, and Aziraphale firmly fixed his gaze on the jungle below them, feeling his face flush.

“I—I’d like that very much,” Crowley said quietly.

  


* * *

  


“I should warn you,” Crowley said as he led Aziraphale through the jungle, making frequent stops to make sure he was following without any difficulty. “My first name. You’ll find it out sooner or later. It’s hideous.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Aziraphale said brightly, following after Crowley with his trunk again lashed to his back. He’d at least agreed to let Crowley carry it half the time, though.

“It really is,” Crowley countered, ducking around a low-hanging branch. He braced himself. “It’s Arkansas.”

Behind him, he heard Aziraphale snort and then outright laugh.

“Arkansas Jones Crowley,” Crowley continued grimly. “My mother was American; lord knows what she was thinking. I’ve had to go by ‘A. J.’ all my life.”

“Oh, I—I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, clearly putting forth an effort to sound genuine even while the hint of another laugh bubbled up.

“Tell me about it,” Crowley grumbled, and ground to a halt when he felt Aziraphale’s hand on his arm.

“I think it’s fine, really. No worse than ‘Aziraphale.’” Aziraphale stuck out his hand brightly. “Pleased to meet you, Arkansas Jones.”

Crowley gave Aziraphale the most withering glare he could muster, which, at the moment, was admittedly not very withering at all. He was far too excited for that, and happier than he could remember being in a long time. “Don’t ever call me that again.”

“No, no, of course not,” Aziraphale agreed quickly, but the suppressed smile tugging at his lips was clear enough proof of that lie.

Crowley rolled his eyes and turned to continue their walk, the spring in his step undeterred. “Those artifacts still packaged all right?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Aziraphale said brightly, and Crowley heard him pat the sack in his arms. Though they’d decided that the sack was the most convenient means of transportation, Aziraphale had carefully sorted through the artifacts before they’d left and wrapped them individually in various extraneous pieces of clothing, thus ensuring that there was no chance of them accidentally scratching each other.

“I am sorry about the time at the bar,” Aziraphale continued. “If you did actually think there would be treasure. I didn’t mean to mislead you.”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Crowley said, waving it away. “And besides, we did find treasure!”

“Yes, but, well, you can’t have it,” Aziraphale said, almost apologetically. “It’s historically important. It should go to a museum, so everyone can appreciate it.”

“Yep,” agreed Crowley, who would have been really quite surprised if he had somehow managed to become fabulously wealthy during his time as a guide.

 _Besides_ , Crowley thought as he paused again to make sure Aziraphale was still following easily, a smile creeping unbidden across his face at the mere sight of him, _I did find a treasure._

And this one he was very certain he was keeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate fic title: Arkansas Jones and the Treasure of Palenque!
> 
> Head to the next chapter for the author's note! Also, while this is the end of this story, I'm happy to say that there will be a sequel going up in a few months about Aziraphale and Crowley's trip back to London. Stay tuned for that!


	12. Author’s Note

Welcome to the author’s note! This is where I ramble on about the historical aspects of the story and show you all the cool pictures I found over the course of my research.

Overall, the story is as accurate as I could make it, with the exception of a few artistic liberties taken mostly with the tomb (detailed below).

## Palenque

Let’s start with the city itself. For a broad overview, here’s a map of some Maya sites on the Yucatán Peninsula.

Palenque is in the west, near where the peninsula meets the mainland, and you can compare its location with that of other well-known Maya sites, such as Chichén Itzá in the north. For reference, Villahermosa, where our story begins, is slightly northwest of Tortuguero.

Since we’re talking about Villahermosa, here’s a photo of it in the 1930s:

So a bit earlier than the ’50s when this story is set, but it at least gives you an idea of the architecture of the area.

Back to Palenque, here’s a map of the ancient city. The amber buildings are those that have been excavated; more than 90% of Palenque remains unexplored.

The large, square amber building in the middle is the palace, and directly to its southwest is the Temple of the Inscriptions. From the many rivers, you can see why the locals might have called their city Lakam Ha (‘big water’)! The site took its modern name of “Palenque” from the nearest town.

Looking at the palace first, here’s a photo of it today (I took some liberties with the floorplan, to make the chase scene more cinematic):

And of the Temple of the Inscriptions:

If your first impression is that the pyramid is a bit smaller and squatter than you were imagining, never fear! This is but the first of several examples we’re going to look at of photography being misleading (due in no small part to Palenque’s structures being built on a baffling scale). For instance, take a look at this photo of the Temple from the side:

To start with, this gives you a better impression of the steepness of the steps. Not so squat and unimpressive now, eh?

Next, remember that each of the steps in the main flight are about twice as tall as modern steps. The doorways in the temple at the top are also much taller than the average modern doorway. Take another look at the photo above, and this time look for the white blob on the close side of the temple, above that slanted grass shade. That’s a person’s head and shoulders! Bigger than you thought, right?

For a different sense of the height of the pyramid, scroll back up to the photo of the palace. That photo was taken from the top of the Temple of the Inscriptions. That’s the kind of view the temple commands.

Another interesting thing to note is the landscaping around the palace and temple. The ground is very flat and has a well-tended lawn, which is a real testament to the work put into excavating the palace and temple and opening the area up for tourism.

When John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, the first Westerners to explore Palenque, reached it around 1839–41, it looked something like this:

This is the view from the same rocky outcropping that Crowley takes Aziraphale to, with the palace on the left and the Temple of the Inscriptions on the right. If you compare the appearance of the temple to the photograph above, however, you’ll immediately notice some alarming discrepancies. To name just a few, Catherwood’s pyramid appears to lack corners, the temple on top is too small, the scale of the trees makes no sense whatsoever, and the large hill directly behind the pyramid (visible in the modern photographs and in the Palenque map as elevation lines) is missing.

If we do some art historical sleuthing, we learn that this is because this view is completely imaginary. In [his 1844 publication](https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100242136) of this and other images from his travels, Catherwood admits that it was impossible to get a clear view of the site due to the “large size of the trees, and dense nature of the forest,” and that this is a composite image pieced together from various sketches and floorplans of the individual buildings.

Additionally, it should be noted that this is a color lithograph that was made up to several years after Catherwood’s visit to Palenque, and not by his own hand either. It’s impossible to say how much oversight Catherwood had over the creation of this particular image, and it’s wholly possible that the artist—listed as A. Picken—unintentionally introduced greater error than already existed in Catherwood’s “best guess” composite view. Those “copies of copies” that Aziraphale was talking about were a real problem!

Despite the inaccuracy of this fanciful illustration, I decided (much as Catherwood did) that there was value in getting an upfront overview of the area, and included this imaginary vista in the story for the benefit of the characters and readers both.

When another explorer, Alfred Maudslay, visited Palenque in the 1880s, he had photography at his disposal, as well as the ability to make plaster casts of intricate reliefs, capturing more detail than illustrations could.

Here’s what the Temple of the Inscriptions looked like after they’d started knocking down the trees:

Again, if you think the temple looks a bit small, bear in mind that the architecture and trees are both larger than they appear. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the person standing at the top of the temple steps:

I told you those doorways were enormous!

## The Temple of the Inscriptions

Looking more specifically at just the temple, here’s a reconstruction of what it might have looked like in its heyday, with a cutaway showing the location of Pakal’s tomb:

The red coloring is accurate and based on the flakes of stucco that have been found at the site. The yellow object on the temple’s roof, which is mostly broken off today, is called a roof comb. That's not a thing you find in Western architecture!

You’ll also note that the pyramid has nine distinct layers, which historians believe are meant to correlate with the nine layers of the underworld (thus marking this as a funerary building). By apparently sheer coincidence, this is the same number of circles of Hell that Dante writes about. Unlike Dante, the closest approximation of a Maya heaven has 13 tiers.

Moving to the temple atop the pyramid, the first thing that Aziraphale and Crowley look at is one of the square pillars, which features a relief of a woman (on the right here):

Her net skirt is what allows Aziraphale to identify her guise as that of the First Mother. Across from her on the other side of the main entrance is the First Father (shown at left, above), who is also holding an infant. It is thought that these are Pakal and his wife, the Lady Tz’ak-Ahaw, and the infant represents their firstborn son, Kan-Balam.

At this point, it’s important to note that construction on the Temple of the Inscriptions started in 675, eight years before Pakal’s death. After his death, it was finished by his son and successor (Kan-Balam), who as the reigning monarch probably had a hand in choosing the reliefs that adorned the pillars. By deciding to depict his parents as the First Mother and Father, he is legitimizing their divine right (and, by extension, his own) to rule Palenque. Ancient history’s all about who has the power!

Moving past the pillars, here’s a quick floorplan of the temple itself:

The three thin rectangular bump-outs along the walls are the panels of inscriptions.

Finding photos of the interior of the temple itself is nigh on impossible, but I did find this one, from 1895:

Most of the buildings at Palenque are made from small stones, and the Temple of the Inscriptions is unique in the largeness of the slabs it uses, visible here even in place of the usual corbeled (stepped) ceiling.

But this photo holds a hidden gem: if you look very closely at the lefthand wall, you can just _barely_ see the inscription carved there.

## The Inscriptions

Continuing on this theme, here’s Maudslay’s plaster cast of the righthand inscription:

You read Mayan glyphs in columns that are two glyphs across, so the fifth glyph in the inscription is actually in the first column, but three glyphs down. That fifth glyph (the bottom glyph in this excerpt, which also includes a much clearer line-drawing version), is Pakal’s name:

We’ll come back to this in a moment, but for now let’s jump to the inscription along the front edge of Pakal’s sarcophagus lid:

If you’re interested in how this breaks down, 1 and 2 are the date of birth (8 Ahau, 13 Pop), 3 is the word “birth,”, 4 and 5 are the date of death (6 Edznab, 11 Yax) with 6 adding additional info about the long count, 7 is the word “death”, 8 is Pakal’s name, and 9 is an honorary epithet. Just by looking at the first two glyphs, you may even be able to figure out the Mayan numerical system!

So if we take #8 from the sarcophagus lid, and the fifth glyph from the inscription on the temple wall, we can compare Pakal’s names as Aziraphale does in the last chapter:

K’inich and Janaab are Pakal’s first(ish) names, so together each glyph is his full name. The capitalized words are those that are logographic, and syllabic text is shown in lowercase.

 _K’inich_ , for instance, means “sun-eyed” in Mayan, and is represented by a compound sign consisting of two squashed rectangles, as in the glyph from the temple inscription. (I don’t know why the first sign is missing from the sarcophagus inscription, but the linguists don’t seem worried about it.) Likewise, _janaab_ is a Mayan word meaning “flower,” and is shown in both inscriptions by a rounded sign enclosing five circles. These two words are considered logographs because one symbol represents one word.

The word _pakal_ , meaning “hand shield”, as Aziraphale describes in the story, is shown as a logograph on the sarcophagus lid but broken down syllabically in the temple inscription. Those three syllables are _pa_ , _ka_ , and _la_. If you’re wondering where the extra “a” at the end of “la” came from, it’s there because syllabic languages use consonant-vowel pairs, and if there’s a “silent” vowel at the end of a word, that silent vowel is generally supposed to match the vowel of the previous syllable (a concept called synharmony).

Sidenote about ideographs: I sort of lump logographs and ideographs together in this story, but they are technically different things. A logograph is just one symbol that represents one word. The 1:1 ratio is important. An ideograph is (largely speaking) a _type_ of logograph, where the symbol is conceptually related to the word it stands for. More specific even than that is the pictograph, where the symbol is a literal depiction of the word it represents. So, in the signs above, the logographic version of _pakal_ is also an ideograph (conveying the idea of shield + hand) by using pictographic representations of those two concepts: shield and hand. But I’m guessing a hand-shield doesn’t literally have a picture of a hand drawn on it, which is what makes it ideographic. Having fun yet?

While Aziraphale has all of these wonderful linguistic revelations only hours after discovering the tomb, in reality this process took about twenty years. His theory about the Mayan language being syllabic belongs to Russian linguist Yuri Knorozov, who published it in 1952, the same year this story takes place. Knorozov’s theory wasn’t taken seriously for many years, though, partially because of the widespread belief that the language was definitely _not_ syllabic (thanks, J. E. S. Thompson), partially because many American and British scholars didn’t want to look seriously at a Russian theory in the middle of the Cold War, and partially because there were still so few inscriptions (and reproductions of inscriptions) available to test the theory against.

The connection between the _pakal_ glyphs on the sarcophagus lid and the wall of the temple wasn’t made until 1973, when it was discovered by a group of epigraphers at a round table. Progress on decoding the language picked up soon after, and today we’ve deciphered about 60% of Mayan glyphs.

## The Staircase

Next, let’s make our descent into Pakal’s tomb! We’ll start with the flagstone that hid the staircase’s entrance:

Mexican archeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier and his team discovered the flagstone in 1948 and removed it easily enough, but, unlike Aziraphale and Crowley, they were faced with a passageway choked with rubble. (When they say that a tomb is “sealed,” they really mean it.) With no idea what they might find at the end, Ruz’s team started excavating. It took them four years to reach the bottom.

Here’s the view on the way down:

Cheery.

Once they’d reached the bottom, Ruz and his team discovered the box of sacrifices, but these too had been “sealed”—the bones had been coated in a lime mixture similar to mortar and bound to the surrounding stones (ick).

Like Crowley, Ruz’s team then discovered the false wall and entered the tomb itself.

## The Tomb

As you might have deduced from my overwrought descriptions, the tomb’s architecture is a little confusing. It’s also very small and cramped, and one of my larger artistic liberties was expanding the room. Here’s a diagram of the real thing:

The 3D cutaway does a good job of showing you the rear of the room, with the two pockets of space and the stone pier that the carved slab can slide backwards onto. From the overhead view, it’s also interesting to note that the carved slab is wider than the staircase. This means that it was probably placed in the tomb (on the supporting pier) while the pyramid was being built around it, and then slid into place after Pakal’s burial.

Here’s the tomb as it looked when Ruz discovered it:

Look at those stalactites! And that beautiful carved slab! While giving you a great feel for the ambience and architecture, what this photo doesn’t show you is the front half of the room. This is because, as you might have noticed from the above diagram, there isn’t one. In the image immediately above, the photographer is standing on the stairs.

Consider this newer photo instead:

As you can see in the foreground, the stairs don’t descend to the floor at all; rather, they stop when they reach the sarcophagus, making it very difficult to see any of the reliefs along even the front edge of the block. Since this configuration doesn’t provide much space for our heroes to dramatically sacrifice themselves, I added a front section to the room.

Another baffling thing about the this photo is that the tomb appears so much smaller than it does in Ruz’s photo, just above it. Without the context of the worker, the scale of the room (like so many Maya structures) is very easy to miscalculate.

To give you an idea of what the entire sarcophagus would look like if there was sufficient room to see it, here’s a replica:

Also, here’s a view of the ceiling of the tomb, including the black stone beams and more of the white stalactites:

Now, let’s take a look at that gorgeous sarcophagus lid! Here it is in all its glory, along with a line art version for easy viewing:

There’s clearly a lot going on here, and Aziraphale covered the highlights of the accepted interpretation in the story. The rest of the iconography is still very much in dispute by scholars, though it’s probably safe to say that Pakal is dressed as the Maya maize god (who famously passes through the underworld and is reborn) and his peculiar curled up position may be indicative of this process of rebirth. There’s also a fascinating theory about the world tree symbolizing the Milky Way (which the Maya called the White Road, or _Sak Beh_ ), which Pakal “falls down” as he dies (the Maya word for death being _och_ _b'ih_ , literally “enters the road”).

In our story, the carved slab is pushed backwards to reveal the sarcophagus, but Ruz and his team preferred to lift it instead, using car jacks and slabs of wood. Here’s Ruz himself, likely on the very day they lifted the lid:

The Howard Carter of the Maya himself!

As you can see, the sarcophagus is quite large—much larger than some of the earlier photos likely led you to believe! The lid alone weighs five tons, and it definitely couldn’t have been moved by four people with a crowbar (another of my little white lies).

Also, if you look at the glyph between Ruz’s head and shoulder, you’ll see Pakal’s name!

Within the sarcophagus itself, here are the earthly remains of Pakal:

The “bathtub” recess in these images (which I referred to in the story as “the sarcophagus” for the sake of clarity) has already had its lid removed; it would have nestled onto the ledge. Scholars aren’t sure why the recess has the “fish tail” shape at the foot.

Here’s a detail of some of the jewelry found with Pakal, which you’ll notice has fallen to pieces:

For the sake of having film-worthy treasure for our heroes and villains to fight over, I kept the pieces intact in the story. You can imagine them more as they look today, after having been painstakingly reconstructed:

## Miscellaneous

Here’re a handful of other fun facts I learned along the way.

**Longevity:** Pakal ruled Palenque for 68 years, making him the fifth-longest-reigning monarch in history. He held the fourth place spot until Queen Elizabeth II overtook him in 2020.

 **Queen of Palenque:** Pakal’s mother, Lady Sak Kʼukʼ, ruled Palenque solo until Pakal was old enough to ascend to the throne. Even then, there is evidence that she remained an influential regent for the first several decades of Pakal’s rule.

 **Double-headed serpent:** If you’re not familiar with the double-headed Aztec serpent at the British Museum that Crowley mentions in the bar, it’s this one (well worth a visit!):

**Maya codices** : Aziraphale mentions that there are only three Maya codices that survived de Landa’s crusade. In actuality, there are four, but the last one wasn’t discovered until the 1960s, after this story is set. Most of them contain astronomical and religious information. Here’re a few pages from the Dresden codex that describe eclipses, multiplication tables, and a flood:

**Yucatán:** The word “Yucatán” comes from the Mayan _uic aithan_ , which is what the natives told the Spanish when they asked what their land was called. _Uic aithan_ means “what do you say, we do not understand you.”

 **Gardens:** Much like Crowley, the Maya loved gardens. Montezuma II had three, and their grandeur impressed even the Spanish.

 **Quetzalcoatl:** Quetzalcoatl is one of the main Maya gods and, since he shares a lot of attributes with Crowley and Aziraphale, I had planned to include him in the story somewhere. However, he doesn’t really have anything to do with Palenque, and since this is a human AU, that also dilutes some of the parallels. Still, let me enumerate them to you!

  * “Quetzalcoatl” means “precious serpent” or “serpent of precious feathers”
  * Did I mention he’s a winged serpent?
  * Patron god of the priesthood, learning, and knowledge
  * Related to the planet Venus (hat tip to Eden!verse)
  * Inventor of books (hat tip to Horemheb)
  * Symbol of death and resurrection
  * Giver of maize to mankind (apples, anyone?)



The stories just write themselves!

## Sources

My research covered a decent amount of ground, but I wanted to give an extra shout-out to a couple of particularly useful publications.

  * [_The Code of Kings_ by Linda Schele and Peter Mathews](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Code-of-Kings/Linda-Schele/9780684852096), which has a chapter on Pakal’s tomb and was the source of a great many details about the various reliefs and glyphs.
  * [_Lost Languages_ by Andrew Robinson](https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Languages-Undeciphered-Robinson-2002-04-25/dp/B01FIW6BDO), which got me interested in the Maya in the first place. It has a chapter on the decipherment of the Mayan language and provided the basis for the entire linguistic subplot of this story.
  * [“The Tomb of K’inich Janaab Pakal”](http://www.mesoweb.com/articles/guenter/TI.pdf) by Stanley Guenter, which translates the writing at the Temple of the Inscriptions glyph-by-glyph and provided specific detail for the linguistic subplot.
  * [“The Untold Story of Alberto Ruz and his Archaeological Excavations at Palenque, México” by Elaine Day Schele](https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/22254), an extremely helpful 440-page dissertation on Ruz’s life and work, which describes in great detail the discovery and excavation of Pakal’s tomb.



The little step pyramid icon I used for scene breaks was created by [Alvaro Cabrera from the Noun Project](https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=maya+pyramid&i=1191276).

A big thank-you to DoctorTrekLock and Spinner12 for beta’ing.

Last but not least, if you enjoyed this story you’d probably like another Good Omens fic of mine, [The Curse of Horemheb](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14663598/chapters/33876558), which details Crowley and Aziraphale’s adventures in Egypt in both 1292 BC and 1908 AD.

Thanks for reading, everybody, and stay tuned for the forthcoming sequel!


End file.
